Listening and Painting – an audience participation workshop

Kristina Kõrver has been a researcher and archive specialist at the Arvo Pärt Centre since 2012. Riin Eensalu is the programme manager of the Arvo Pärt Centre and has been involved with the Centre since 2013.

This engaging workshop by Riin Eensalu and Kristina Kõrver of the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia is inspired by Arvo Pärt’s creative crisis during the 1970s. It was a time when Pärt was searching for his own voice and struggled to find the right means to create new concert works. “Back then I didn’t even know if I would be able to compose music ever again,” the composer has said about that period of his life.

About two years before the birth of tintinnabuli, Pärt’s own musical language, in 1974, he decided to express himself in some other art form, one in which he was a complete novice. He began painting and decorating little flowerpots – simply and without any artistic ambition, just for himself. We will never know if it was painting that eventually got the composer’s creativity flowing again, but it brought him great joy and released something in him.

During this workshop, we invite you to discover the delicate power of art and music, to experience the peace and joy that art can offer in the simplest way. Anyone can create something beautiful, even if it’s just a small painted flowerpot.

MuiscConnects in partnership with University of Galway’s Arts in Action is delighted to present this workshop as part of the new outreach initiative Lochránn.

This event is part of MusicConnects’ International Guest Artist Residency Programme 2024 and is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland’s International Residency Initiatives Scheme. MusicConnects is delighted to partner with the Arvo Pärt Centre and the Estonian Centre of Contemporary Music. Thank you also to the Estonian Embassy in Dublin.