Other events in Baltic States

Tallinn will buzz with festival excitement on April 4-6, 2013, while 30 music venues will fill up with music fans and 233 artists from 20 countries, Tallinn Music Festival's press service said LETA.

This year, Tallinn Music Festival has chosen a selection of town's best restaurants and eateries that offer special menus and discounts to festival guests. Festival goers will have a chance to visit 16 restaurants over three afternoons, just before hitting the music clubs.

Tallinn Music Week that has grown into one of the biggest indoor festivals in the Baltic region, it spans diverse musical styles and genres, having developed dedicated programs for classical music, contemporary composition, folk and jazz and the whole spectrum that popular music has to offer.

International highlights this year include the dream pop sensation Me and My Drummer from Berlin, playful electronic visionaries Rangleklods from Denmark and the all-girl electro-punk attack LCMDF from Finland. As international interest for the festival has grown significantly, so has the number of countries represented in the program. The artist line-up is proud of the Iberi choir from Georgia, graffiti artists and dub step stars 3421 from Israel, Belarus' art rock trio Folkmashina and the Spanish trumpeter Adan Delgado Illada. And last but not least, Namgar will bring over the mysteries of Mongolian and Buryatian traditional music.

Finland is big at this year's TMW with 26 artists in the program; Russia and Lithuania have strong line-ups with 6 artists from each country. Denmark and UK follow with 5. Estonia is represented by 165 versatile acts from all genres and subgenres.

This year the festival has also teamed up with the annual world-travelling series of music workshops for DJ-s, vocalists and music enthusiasts, the Red Bull Music Academy, celebrating its 15th birthday at Tallinn Music Week. Their showcase will present Estonian artists who have participated in the Academy’s international events throughout the years, and also the drum’n’bass and breakstep legend DJ Zinc from UK.

The festival’s City Stage program will take new music to unexpected locations and venues in the city – book shops, galleries, record stores, cafés, design studios, hotel bars and elsewhere – offering free of charge daytime concerts by selected TMW artists.

On its 5th birthday TMW has launched a brand new festival edition: TMW restaurants’ showcase “TMW Tastes”! From April 4-6 a selection of 16 hand-picked restaurants will offer special afternoon tasting menus and discounts to festival pass holders. So, before hitting the clubs, festival goers can try the best culinary achievements Tallinn has to offer from high end fine dining like Gloria, the legendary gastronomy institution of Estonia from 1937 to local’s favorites, the hip and bohemian F-hoone or Von Krahl’s “Aed”. Special menus are available from 3 pm to 6 pm, so you can plan for a 3-day tasting journey through 16 restaurants before the festival concerts in music venues start. Restaurant festival programme: www.tmw.ee/food

The full program of restaurants, venues, artists and interactive city maps can be easily found with the help of the new smart phone application EMT Live that will make it easy to compile your personal festival program and purchase tickets. EMT Live smart phone application will be available shortly free of charge from Google Play and AppStore.

Last year 11 200 music fans and 589 music industry delegates participated in TMW, this year we expect a truly international crowd from all the neighboring countries and beyond – both as festival goers and industry professionals. The hub for TMW’s conference and music industry pro’s will remain to be the wonderful Nordic Hotel Forum, but we expect hotels and guest houses to fill up soon, so book your trip as soon as you can!

"This is a city relishing its creative freedom, which during the course of the fourth Tallinn Music Week is showcased by hundreds of diverse musical acts, both from Estonia and other (mainly north European) countries. Estonia is a small country and capital Tallinn only has a population of 416,000, yet it was European Capital of Culture in 2011: there is a lot going on," wrote Clash.

“For the most part, being in Tallinn felt much like being in any modern European city: tall buildings, classy hotels, department stores, sleek restaurants and clubs. Tallinn’s old town, on the other hand, felt very much like stepping back into the medieval ages or, as locals described it, a “fairy tale land,” said FILTER Magazine.