VOX CLAMANTIS

often combines old and new in its concert programs. When they started 22 years ago they sung only Gregorian chant. Soon, however, the tone, the phrasing and the sense of music that were characteristic of the band aroused interest in several Estonian composers, and many of them have now written for the band. Thanks to the Gregorian chant, the band of also formed a close connection with Arvo Pärt in its early days, who has today become the most-performed author of Vox Clamantis, and whose music has been actively sung by the band all over the world. Over the past year, there have been performances at the Sydney Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the RCM's 21C Festival in Toronto, the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, the Institute for Advanced Study concert series at Princeton in the US, as well as at the Shanghai Concert Hall and many concert halls across Europe. Besides Arvo Pärt, Helena Tulve, Tõnis Kaumann, Galina Grigorjeva, Sven Grünberg and many others have written works for the band. From various improvisational materials, the band has intertwined programs with the Tunisian singer Dhafer Youssef, the Israeli musician Yair Dali, and the Weekend Guitar Trio. The collaborators include such top artists of today's world as the French pianist Jean-Claude Pennetier, the Catalonian singer Arianna Savall, the Italian nyckelharpa-virtuoso Marco Ambrosini, and many others the listing of whom would take a long time. Vox Clamantis always puts the message first, and as its mediator, it has found its way into the hearts of many people. The band has been recognised with the cultural prize of the Republic of Estonia and the annual cultural endowment award. The ensemble has taken part of the Grammy-winning record Arvo Pärt - Adam's Lament and its music has been used in the Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino film La Grande Bellezza. Vox Clamantis Previous record Arvo Pärt - The Deer's Cry has won numerous awards: Estonian Classic Album 2017, Diapason d' Or and Choc in the Classica magazine in France, BBC Music Magazine and Danish Radio annual award nominations and more. However, the latest record Sacrum convivium, which has just come out in France, has already earned the highest recognition in the local music magazine Classica and selected by the Estonian choir association for the choir record of the year 2018. The creator and artistic director of the band is Jaan-Eik Tulve.

JAAN-EIK TULVE

was born in Tallinn. After graduating from the Tallinn Conservatory's conducting department, he continued his studies at the Parisian Higher National Conservatory of Music and Dance in the field of conducting the Gregorian choir, after which he became Professor Louis-Marie Vigne's assistant in the same class. However, he has also done pedagogical work in a number of Gregorian courses across Europe. He teaches Gregorian chant in a dozen French monasteries regularly. Since 1996, J.-E. Tulve is a Gregorian chant professor at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since 1992, for a decade, he conducted Le Cheur Grégorien de Paris (the Gregorian Choir of Paris), with whom he has sung all over Europe, but also in Lebanon and Morocco, and has received several awards for various recordings. In 1993, Jaan-Eik Tulve founded the band Lac et Mel in Paris, which, alongside the Gregorian chant, also handled early polyphony and, in 1994, the female branch of the Gregorian Choir of Paris. In 2004, he and a couple of associates founded the festival “Ariel” dedicated to Jewish deep culture in Estonia. In 1996, J.-E. Tulve founded the ensemble Vox Clamantis in Tallinn, of which today a collective with a very broad repertoire is formed. He has commissioned contemporary works from many Estonian composers for the ensemble, as well as done special collaborative work crossing limits and genres with several musicians such as Dhafer Youssef, Arianna Savall, Marco Ambrosini, Yair Dalal, Weekend Guitar Trio, etc. J.-E. Tulve has recorded music with the ensemble for Estonian Radio and record companies ECM Records, Arion and Mirare and received high recognition for the records. In addition, J.-E. Tulve has conducted the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Estonian National Male Choir, the band Hortus Musicus, the Pärnu City Orchestra, the Gregorian Choir of Paris, the chamber orchestra I Virtuosi Italiani and others. Music editors of the Estonian Public Broadcasting selected Jaan-Eik Tulve as Musician of the Year 2017.