As the Baltics shakes off the last chill of winter, and Tallinn edges into the pale light of spring, Tallinn Music Week (TMW) activates a city. From Thursday 3rd to Sunday 6th April, the festival moves through the city as an high pressure system, switching on venues, recharging conversations, and altering the cultural weather across Estonia and well beyond. With over 170 artists from 39 countries, along with a conference and satellite programme of art and ideas, TMW continues to treat Tallinn as climate, terrain and atmosphere for the kind of cultural exchange it fosters.
The story starts with the city itself. Tallinn is compact—just under half a million people—but dense with historical layers. There’s the UNESCO-listed Old Town, all winding cobbled streets and medieval spires; Soviet-era housing blocks and hulking examples of late brutalism. In contrast, the skyline now cuts a sharper silhouette, shaped by post-independence glass towers and the ambitions of a thriving startup scene reshaping everything from governance to education. Culture here doesn’t lean on nostalgia or singular identity: it’s fragmented, experimental, and defiantly open. This intricacy makes it an ideal backdrop for a festival that has never been just about booking artists.
TMW began in 2009, in the wake of the financial crash and just five years after Estonia joined the EU. What started as a platform to spotlight local talent has evolved into an informal summit for independent music communities across the Baltics and Scandinavia, and increasingly, a gateway for emerging artists and networks from Eastern and Southern Europe—and further afield—with delegates and performers from places like Canada and Taiwan looking to forge new connections. Like its host city, it’s not flashy, but it’s deeply networked.
The hosting venues also reflect this mindset. Telliskivi Creative City, the festival’s unofficial HQ, was once a railway factory; today, it’s home to gig spaces, art galleries, second-hand shops, breweries, coffee roasters, and recording studios. Noblessner, formerly a submarine shipyard, has become a hub for experimental performance, audiovisual art, and pop-up events. Then there’s Kopli—still rough around the edges—where smaller DIY showcases and late-night sets unfold in semi-legal spaces. The geography matters: this is a festival embedded in the city’s real, shifting fabric.
Musically, the 2025 edition keeps things broad on purpose. The programming doesn’t chase hype cycles, but it doesn’t ignore them either. You’ll find everything from Estonian ambient producers and Georgian noise collectives to Sámi vocal traditions, Finnish rap, and queer club acts from Canada.
There’s also a full-day conference, this year focusing on the impact of AI on music creation and distribution, touring in the shadow of tightened borders, and how small nations punch above their weight culturally. It’s not just an add-on, it draws policymakers, DIY organisers, artists and researchers into the same space, often in the same room.
Tallinn Music Week works because it resists the festival monoculture. It’s small, agile, and rooted in place. And in a region where cultural funding is increasingly precarious and geopolitical tensions are impossible to ignore, TMW feels more and more like a necessary space. Not just to hear what’s next, but to understand how it’s coming together.
- Thursday, 3rd April
TMW launches into its opening night with a lineup that promises discovery, connection, and plenty of sonic surprises. From the intimate glow of F-hoone Black Hall to the industrial pulse of Paavli Culture Factory, and the adventurous experiments unfolding at Club of Different Rooms, Thursday night sets the tone for a festival where genres dissolve and borders blur. Whether it’s the soulful warmth of Canada’s indie scene, the cutting-edge creativity of Taiwan’s underground, or bold, genre-defying showcases from the Baltics’ rising talents, this is a night of music that stretches across continents, without ever leaving Tallinn.
The journey begins at F-hoone Black Hall with the Made in Canada showcase. Tiger Balme, a Toronto-based collective, takes the stage at 7:15PM with a sound that blends indie folk, dream pop and jazz. Their instrumentation layers guitar, bass, vibraphone and harp into a textured, immersive soundscape that’s both comforting and hypnotic. Formed by Asian-Canadian female and non-binary musicians, the band’s debut album is a personal reflection on identity, resilience and connection.
The mood shifts at 8:05PM, Ana Lía shifts the mood with a vibrant, multilingual performance. The Dominican-Canadian singer-songwriter blends Latin folk, jazz, flamenco and pop, anchored by a voice full of warmth and presence. Having already shared stages with Latin Grammy winners and built a growing international audience, Ana Lía brings a set filled with rhythm, melody and storytelling that crosses languages and borders.
Meanwhile, over at Paavli Culture Factory, Joel Sarakula steps up at 8:25PM for the Võnge Festival Stage. The Australian-born, UK-based artist channels 1970s funk, soul and soft rock with a cool, modern edge. Think Steely Dan meets Hall & Oates, but filtered through a sharper lens. Sarakula doesn’t just revive vintage aesthetics, he builds a musical world that feels cinematic and carefully detailed.
At Club of Different Rooms, the Taiwan Music Flight showcase offers a deeper dive into sound. At 8:30PM, WOOONTA begins a set blending traditional Eastern instrumentation with experimental world music. Led by erhu player T.S. Lo and Japanese sitarist Ryohei Kanemitsu, the group explores the space between folk melodies, jazz, rock and electronics.
An hour later, 9:30PM, Chih-Chih & Chih-Yin Kuo bring a quieter intensity. From Taiwan’s Taitung region, their music is rooted in Amis indigenous traditions, weaving fingerpicked guitar and vocal improvisation into performances that are never quite the same twice. Their set feels raw and intimate, shaped by tradition but constantly moving.
As the night deepens, Outlet Drift takes the stage at 10:30PM. Their trio-driven set pulses with post-rock atmospherics, indigenous rhythms, and freeform experimentation. The music shifts between meditative swells and sudden, kinetic bursts, demanding full immersion. This is live performance as process—spontaneous, physical, and wholly in the moment.
At 11:05PM, Annael takes over Paavli Culture Factory for Late Night Explorations, bringing his fearless blend of avant-pop, electronic minimalism and beat-driven production. The French singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist moves easily between disco, rumba, house and funk, balancing groove with atmosphere in a set that feels both retro and future-facing.
Finally, back at Club of Different Rooms, Tõnu Tubli closes the night with a performance that transforms percussion into live theatre. Known as the drummer for Trad.Attack!, Tubli’s solo project blends drums, samples, loops and lighting into a genre-bending exploration of rhythm. For TMW, he incorporates Taiwanese musical themes, bridging traditions with bold, beat-driven experimentation.
- Friday, 4th April
Friday’s programme unfolds like a shifting weather system—drifting between folk ritual, electronic pulse, post-punk noise and ambient introspection. From 7:00PM onwards, the city’s venues come alive in parallel threads, each offering a distinct atmosphere shaped by tradition, innovation and regional specificity.
Fenno-Ugria Night (F-hoone Black Hall) set the evening in motion at 7:00PM with Maria Korepanova–Vlady Bystrov, a collaboration between a Bessermyan folk vocalist and a Russian improviser working with wind instruments and live electronics. Their set draws from Uralic vocal traditions, stretching them into sustained, textural territory without reducing them to ambience. At the same time, Ošmes, a Udmurt national ensemble, present a rare live appearance of polyphonic vocal harmonies, frame drums and layered folk dance rhythms rooted in Finno-Ugric ritual contexts.
At 8:40PM, Trepp, a trio from the Mari El Republic, introduce amplified zither, angular electric bass and tightly phrased vocals. Their sound balances punk energy with modal melodic lines, resisting folklore aesthetics in favour of confrontational arrangements. At 10:10PM, VIMMA, a Finnish-Estonian collective, perform original compositions blending runo-song, jazz and art rock. Their use of odd meters, choral layering and theatrical pacing avoids pastiche, pushing their folk sources into dense and deliberately constructed territories. At 10:55PM, Rézeleje Fanfárosok, a Hungarian-Moldovan brass group, break into high-velocity Balkan dance forms, fusing Romanian and Gagauz brass traditions with syncopated tuba lines and quickfire melodic turns. At 11:40PM, Ravggon, a Sámi rock project led by Ailu Valle, closes the stage with amplified yoik vocals, fuzz-drenched guitar and slow, heavy groove structures that reference doom, grunge and metal without mimicking them.
While the folk traditions are bending into new forms, over at Blowup (Paavli Culture Factory), things take a different turn: raw, unfiltered, and steeped in the spirit of noise rock and no wave. The programme there starts at 7:00PM with Sofia Härdig, a Swedish artist whose guitar-driven set intersects noise rock, no wave and minimal electronics. Her songwriting is stripped down, structured around repetition and texture rather than melodic development. At 10:30PM, The MES, a Finnish garage-punk unit, bring a set built on short, explosive forms: dry drums, surf-influenced riffs and shouted vocals that barely stop to breathe. Their presence is physical, immediate and unpolished by design.
Sounds of the Cities (Club of Different Rooms) highlights urban musical narratives from around the world, tracing the intersections between local tradition and contemporary expression. The curtains there raise at 7:15PM with Angus, an eight-piece Estonian band blending reggae with local folk traditions. Their set weaves together a tight rhythm section, syncopated dub breakdowns, and melodic Estonian phrasing, striking a balance between genre authenticity and regional identity. At 8:00PM, Malikì World Orchestra, a rotating collective, perform multi-part arrangements combining Afro-Peruvian percussion, jazz horn lines and string-based Balkan ornamentation. Their approach is non-linear and improvisation-heavy, favouring shifts in pulse over groove. At 11:00PM, The Howling Eye, a Polish-Swedish quartet, dive into post-rock textures with controlled dynamics and a cinematic approach to structure. They prioritise tone and buildup over hooks, relying on long-form tension. At 11:45PM, Andrey Kiritchenko, a veteran Ukrainian sound artist, performs a solo ambient set with glitch-based textures, quiet noise artefacts and low-resolution field samples—a performance both emotionally spare and technically precise.
Meanwhile, OOPUS presents: Folktronica (D3 Hall) is a showcase of artists working at the crossroads of folk traditions and electronic sound manipulation. Its programme opens at opens at 7:30PM with Kuula Hetke, a duo of classically trained flautists from Estonia, combining processed wooden flute with environmental sound and drone-based electronics. Their compositions are spatially sensitive, rooted in silence and breath. At 11:30PM, Ánnámáret, a Sámi vocalist and composer, uses joik not as archival material but as a living practice, combined with electronics and live visuals. Her performance is contemplative, pulsing, and narratively anchored in Sámi land and language. At 12:30AM, A.M.Poogen closes the night with a hybrid live set fusing traditional Finno-Ugric melodies with looped voice, distorted harmonium and live FX manipulation. Their music resists structure, operating in cyclical, trance-like waves.
Beyond these stages, the night’s sonic vocabulary expands across multiple parallel showcases. At Funk Embassy (Von Krahl), groove and fusion take centre stage. At 9:00PM, SALOMEA, a German vocalist and producer, delivers genre-blending compositions that pull from jazz, R&B and experimental electronic music, often grounded in spoken-word cadences and political subtext. Over in Classical:NEXT (Telliskivi Green Hall), the focus shifts towards radical vocal exploration. At 9:15, Vulva Voce reimagine choral and liturgical traditions through feminist vocal techniques and extended forms, breaking conventional expectations of classical performance. Meanwhile, Cindy & Kate (Kivi Paber Käärid) offers a distinctly Baltic lens on experimental sound. At 9:30PM, Elektroninės Sutartinės, from Lithuania, reconstruct Baltic multipart songs through digital layering and analog synthesis, finding a fragile balance between tradition and abstraction.
Improvisation takes hold at Jazz Stage (Fotografiska), where long-form interplay dictates the flow of the night. Beginning at 9:30PM with The Rocket – Svante Söderqvist Trio & Tuulikki Bartosik , who shape improvisation into fluid conversations between accordion and double bass, where melody and texture ebb and flow. At 10:30PM, Vilnius JJAZZ Ensemble present bold ensemble jazz from Lithuania with shifting rhythmic foundations and orchestrated detail.
Finally, at Dark Disko x Reivile Minuga (HALL), at 10:30PM, Mye_Taai performs a set that explores fractured techno structures, odd-meter grooves and rhythmic tension, drawing from broken beat, drone and industrial ambient.
- Saturday, 5th April
Saturday evening’s programme brings together traditions reimagined, forms broken open, and borders blurred. From Afro-diasporic innovation and Baltic folk reconstruction to shoegaze, Singeli, punk jazz and ambient ritual, the night stretches in many directions at once. Tallinn doesn’t flatten these contrasts, it thrives on them.
Africa NOW! (Fotografiska) showcases contemporary African and African-diasporic music, exploring electronic, rhythmic, and lyrical innovation. The programme at 7:00PM with Meteor Airlines, a Morocco-based trio blending Amazigh rhythmic structures with synth-led textures, traditional instrumentation and minimal electronic production. Their sound sits between trance and storytelling, rhythmically intricate but emotionally restrained. At 9:00PM, Sisso & Maiko, key figures in Tanzania’s Singeli scene, deliver blistering high-BPM sets using raw samples, looped percussion and live MCing—music developed for crowded Dar es Salaam street parties, now re-contextualised in a European venue. At 10:00PM, OneDa, a Manchester-born rapper with Nigerian roots, brings precise flow, politically inflected lyricism and grime-influenced beats. Her set doesn’t lean on fusion for effect; it’s grounded in direct narrative and structural tightness. At 11:00PM, Fidju Kitxora, an artist working between Portugal and Cape Verde, reinterprets batuku rhythms through processed vocals and synth-driven arrangements. At 12:00AM, Taroug closes with a focused, slow-building performance rooted in West African percussion and North African trance aesthetics, unfolding through repetition rather than climax.
The Viljandi Folk Music Festival Stage (Club of Different Rooms) carries the thread of tradition but reshapes it through contemporary interpretation and virtuosity. At 7:15PM, The Baltic Sisters open with an unaccompanied vocal set, drawing from Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian archives to create deeply resonant harmonies. This stark, immersive atmosphere gives way at 8:00PM, Anne-Mari Kivimäki Ensemble expands Finnish folk narratives through processed accordion, bowed lyres and archive-inspired rhythms, drawing on research into Karelian traditions and spells. At 8:45PM, Sounds and Stories from Ruhnu Island presents a rare window into the near-forgotten music of Estonia’s former Swedish minority, reconstructed through oral history, fragments of melody, and adapted instrumentation. At 9:30PM, Duo Ruut, known for their distinctive shared zither setup, play tightly structured compositions drawing on Estonian runo-singing, minimalism and geometric vocal harmonies. At 11:00PM, Mari Kalkun, one of Estonia’s most internationally recognised contemporary folk artists, performs a set based around her recent work on ecological themes, sung in Võro and standard Estonian, accompanied by kannel and prepared piano. At 11:45PM, Söndörgő, a long-established Hungarian tambura group, deliver fast, virtuosic arrangements rooted in Southern Slavic traditions. Their live sound remains acoustic, fast-moving and compositionally complex without ever slipping into ornamentation.
Paavli.LIVE (Paavli Culture Factory) turns towards experimental and genre-blurring sounds, beginning at 8:00PM with Maris Pihlap, an Estonian artist combining layered vocals with looped flute, field recordings and subtle electronics. Her material draws from Finno-Ugric tonalities but avoids pastiche, preferring skeletal arrangements and micro-detail. At 9:00PM, Night Tapes, a London-based trio with an Estonian connection, introduce washed-out synth textures, fragmented beats and diaristic vocal lines—somewhere between dream pop and hypnagogic R&B. At 10:00PM, Smag På Dig Selv, a Danish trio, break open punk, jazz and noise with sax-led eruptions, shouted vocals and rhythm-section chaos. It’s not improvisational in form, but it feels physically unstable, like a band teetering on collapse. At 11:00PM, hackedepicciotto—Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) and Danielle de Picciotto (Love Parade co-founder)—offer cinematic, slow-burning sound pieces built from violin drones, processed guitar and sparse, spoken word.
Vikendica (F-hoone Black Hall) embraces mood and texture, offering a space where atmosphere shapes performance. At 8:15PM, Alembic introduce their North Macedonian blend of heavily modulated guitar, rhythmic delay, and reverb-drenched vocals, carving out deep, immersive spaces. At 9:15PM, Avemaria, a Tallinn-based outfit, channel garage rock through minimal pedal setups, favouring grit and repetition over gloss. At 12:15AM, La Fazani, from Pristina, close the night with an unpredictable set that flips between hip-hop flows, autotuned hooks and low-resolution synth production. The result is stylistically restless but undeniably immediate.
Station Narva (Von Krahl) thrives on bold, politically charged, and theatrical performances. At 9:45PM, Palestinian electro-pop artist Bashar Murad combines accessible choruses with layered video backdrops, visual theatre, and queer-coded costuming, shaping sound as both personal and political expression. At midnight, local and Rhythm Passport favourites Puuluup take the stage with a set built entirely around the talharpa, a bowed lyre they loop and manipulate live, combining humour, historical references and uncanny phrasing. At 12:45AM, Odin, an Estonian producer and multi-instrumentalist, closes with darker, textural electronics that draw on black metal atmospheres, glitch and harmonic drone.
Roots Session (Kivi Paber Käärid) explores the breadth of global folk traditions, starting at 7:00PM with Pepi & Araukaaria, a six-piece Estonia-based band led by Argentinian musician Pepi, delivering soulful performances woven from Latin American folk rhythms, storytelling and heartfelt melodies. At 8:00PM, Finland’s Juurakko, recipients of the Finnish Ethno Gala Artist of the Year in 2020, blend Finnish folk, Afro-American blues, and lively skiffle spirit, incorporating instruments from kantele to cigar box guitar into charismatic, vocal-led performances. At 9:00PM, Scotland’s Megan Black fuses vintage blues-rock aesthetics with contemporary feminist pop, crafting songs charged with emotional intensity and lyrical depth. At 10:00PM, Croatian virtuosos Hojsak & Novosel bring jazz and traditional folk into striking dialogue, pairing double bass and tambura for inventive and impeccably crafted compositions. Faroese songwriter Dania O. Tausen, performing at 11:00PM with her five-piece band, delivers poignant narratives through award-winning songs in Faroese, balancing intimacy with spirited musicality. At 12:00AM, SARĀB, a French-Arabic group, artfully merge electric rock energy, modern jazz experimentation and Arabic maqâmât, resulting in compelling and fiery performances. Closing the showcase at 1:00AM, The Crosslegs channel youthful vigour into modern folk-rock steeped in Irish traditions, romance, and poetic storytelling.
Dreamscape (Paavli Culture Factory) carries the night into ambient and electronic after-hours, its focus on immersive, atmospheric sound design. At 12:30AM Ukrainian producer NFNR, crafts deep, sparse ambient-techno, her use of low-end restraint and delicate high-register melodies creating an expansive, cinematic effect. At 1:15AM, Maryana Klochko, also from Ukraine, blurs early music, Orthodox choral structures and downtempo electronics. Her voice is looped and layered into evolving harmonic shapes, often hovering just outside of song form.
Tallinn Music Week isn’t built around headliners or hype. It’s a platform for exchange—between artists, regions, and ideas—set in a city that itself lives between layers. From Telliskivi’s converted rail yards to Kopli’s DIY corners, TMW is wired into Tallinn’s cultural infrastructure, not just occupying space but activating it.
For Estonia, it’s a way to project without posturing. For the Baltics, it’s one of the few places where independent music networks regularly converge. And for audiences further afield, it offers a grounded, international perspective, one shaped as much by context as by sound.
The countdown is on! Tallinn Music Week is just around the corner set to light up the Estonian capital with an electrifying mix of music from 03/04 to 06/04 Grab your daily tickets & passes HERE