Orient, the Festival of Eastern Music

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Orient is the first and so far only festival in the Baltic countries that is solely dedicated to Asian music, the main focus being on folk and sacred as well as traditional classical music. The festival has featured the most prominent Oriental musicians like the Indian flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, sitarists Pandit Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar, the Japanese giant drums’ ensemble „Kodô”, the Tuvinian guttural singers „Huun-Huur-Tu”, Tibetan Buddhists monks of Gyuto and Gyume monasteries, the Turkish percussionist Burhan Öçal, the Armenian dudukist Jivan Gasparyan, the Azeri muqam-singer Alim Qasimov.

Hariprasad Chaurasia in Estonia Concert Hall, 2001

Buddhist monks of Gyuto monastery, 2006

The festival has been taking place on the initiative and under the artistic leadership by composer Peeter Vähi already since the year 1992. Until 2001 the festival was arranged in co-operation with Estonian National Concert Institute (Eesti Kontsert) after which it was taken over by ERP (Estonian Record Productions) who is nowadays also the owner of the festival’s trade mark. In the course of time the festival has grown into a prestigious event of culture in the Baltic region with concerts taking place in Latvia, Finland, Sweden and St. Petersburg in addition to Estonia as the original location.

Most of the Orient Festival concerts are usually recorded, often in co-operation with the Estonian Broadcasting Corporation. A CD „The Path to the Heart of Asia” with music performed by artists from Taiwan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tuva, Siberia and Turkey has been released. In addition to concerts, dance performances, master classes, tea ceremony, film screenings, art, ikebana and photo exhibitions, lectures on Buddhism and Islam as well as religious rituals, etc. have taken place in the frames of Orient Festival.