Kirjeldus
Ensemble U: Opens the New Season with Two World Premieres Ensemble U: opens its new season with two world premieres, exploring the sounds of nature, vulnerability, destruction and renewal. On Tuesday, 8 September, Ensemble U: presents “ESTONIA / BIOPHONY” , a concert bringing together a selection of recent Estonian music written between 2023 and 2026. At the heart of the programme are two new works commissioned by Ensemble U: Toivo Tulev’s Seven Mating Calls for Six Musicians and Riho Esko Maimets’s Dimension , both receiving their world premieres. The programme also introduces the music of young Estonian-American composer Ryan Adams , alongside a new performance of Pahoehoe / ʻAʻā by Liina Sumera , a work written for Ensemble U: in 2025. Though diverse in sound and approach, the four works are bound by a shared fascination with the natural world and with processes of cyclicality, destruction and renewal, fragility, vulnerability, and elemental force . For Toivo Tulev, the point of departure is the extraordinary life cycle of the cicada: after spending 17 years underground, the insects emerge for a brief and final period of mating. Liina Sumera’s Pahoehoe / ʻAʻā takes its inspiration from the contrasting forms of Hawaiian lava flows, while Riho Esko Maimets turns his attention to vulnerability. Ryan Adams explores a distinctive tension between tenderness and strength , revealing how seemingly opposing qualities can coexist. The concert takes its subtitle, “Biophony,” from the concept of the living soundscape: the totality of sounds produced by an ecosystem’s inhabitants—birds, mammals, amphibians, insects and countless other organisms. What place does human music occupy within this greater field of living sound? To open this question beyond the musical programme itself, Ensemble U: is delighted to welcome Kalevi Kull , one of Estonia’s leading biosemioticians, who will join the concert as a guest speaker and offer a reflection on the relationship between living systems, sound and meaning. Programme Toivo Tulev (1958) Seven Mating Calls for Six Musicians (2026) — world premiere for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin and cello Riho Esko Maimets (1988) Dimension (2026) — world premiere for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin and cello Ryan Adams (1993) Sentimental Densities (2024) for piano, cello and flute Liina Sumera (1988) Pahoehoe / ʻAʻā (2025) for ensemble and electronics The concert is presented in cooperation with ERR / Klassikaraadio and supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, and the Estonian Authors’ Society . The concert will be broadcast on Klassikaraadio . Tickets are available in advance via Fienta.ee , and at the venue from 30 minutes before the beginning of the concert.