Heinavanker,

under the direction of composer Margo Kõlar, is a convocation of a few of Estonia’s finest voices for the performance of ageless music ancient to modern. While rooted in liturgical chant and Renaissance polyphony, the group’s repertoire makes room as well for vitalizing arrangements of Estonian folk hymns and runic songs and sacred works by contemporaries such as Cyrillus Kreek, Arvo Pärt and Margo Kõlar. In Europe, Heinavanker has been a familiar presence on festival and concert stages and on radio for three decades, and the group has been touring regularly North America and South America.

 

The group can be heard on the Harmonia Mundi label (Songs of Olden Times, 2013). “Margo Kolar’s arrangements aren’t just ethnomusicological curation but exercises in a living music, and the ensemble manages to impart a timeless quality to religious and secular songs alike.” Early Music Today, March - May 2014

 

The name “Heinavanker” originates from Hieronymos Bosch' (1453-1516) Haywain Triptych. Its allegoric scenes seem as if inspired from today's life. On this strange painting, there's a huge stack of hay rolling through a land laboring in acquisitiveness towards destruction. In the midst of this, music arises. Both a snide demon and a praying angel are trying to get the musicians under their domain of influence.