The artist application round for Tallinn Music Week 2017 is now open at the festival’s homepage. The ninth edition of the city festival Tallinn Music Week (TMW) will take place in Tallinn, Estonia from 27th March to 2nd April 2017.

Held each spring in Tallinn, Estonia since 2009, Tallinn Music Week is a weeklong celebration of talent, curiosity, creativity, freedom and equality. Already in its 9th year, TMW’s nucleus is the new music festival that offers a multi-genre mix of around 200 acts from the Baltics, across Europe and beyond. The line-up, spanning from outsider artists to chart-pop acts and from folk innovators to classical musicians, is put together on the basis of artist submissions by a broad team of Estonian music experts and event promoters. Applications from all regions and music genres are welcome until 1st November HERE

The festival’s role as a significant platform for emerging acts around the world has grown steadily. TMW 2016 received an all-time record number of nearly 1,300 applications from 47 countries with over 250 acts from 33 countries confirmed to perform at the festival, among them Russian beatmaster Pixelord, Mancunian post-punk troupers The Membranes, Danish-Finnish indie-supergroup Liima, and an Estonian-born world class conductor Kristjan Järvi with DJ World Champion Mr Switch from UK. Besides showcases presented by local promoters TMW has featured festival stages by Finland’s biggest metal festival Tuska and city culture festival Flow, as well as a joint night by UK’s FatCat Records imprint 130701 and Estonian Üle Heli festival.

Among the notable acts that have performed at the festival throughout the years are British folk legend Vashti Bunyan and pseudonymous duo Public Service Broadcasting, Swedish electro-pop sensation Kate Boy, and Finnish synth-pop troubadour Jaakko-Eino Kalevi, to mention just a few. Among the acts who have successfully tested their international breakthrough potential at TMW and moved on to bigger stages are Danish dark rockers Get Your Gun, Belorussian cold-wave group Super Besse, Russian postpunk flag-bearer Motorama, and Estonian very own folk innovators Maarja Nuut and Trad.Attack!.

The full line-up of around 200 acts is announced in February 2017.

• TMW 2017 delegate passes are available for a special “early bird” rate €100 at TMW web store until 30th September. TMW delegate pass grants access to the conference seminars and priority access to the music festival. TMW 2017 conference schedule will be gradually released from December 2016
• TMW 2017 festival passes are available for €40 at TMW web store until 30th November. Festival pass grants access to all concerts and offers discounts at the TMW Tastes’ restaurant festival. Buy your festival pass at http://2017.tallinnmusicweek.ee/store/festival-pass

For the second time TMW will fill the entire week. In addition to the music festival line-up and two-day industry conference, TMW offers a series of free City Stage concerts, a selection of eateries within TMW Tastes; TMW Arts programme, curated by the Estonian Contemporary Arts Development Centre, Design Market showcasing the most exciting Baltic and Scandinavian brands and designs, TMW Talks series with topics from music to science and societal issues, and City Space activities in cooperation with the interior designers of Estonian Academy of Arts.

TMW 2017 dates:

27th March – 2nd April: TMW Tastes, TMW Talks, TMW Cityspace
28th March – 2nd April: TMW Arts
30th March – 1st April: music festival (the evening showcase programme)
30th March – 1st April: City Stage (the daytime live programme)
31st March – 1st April: TMW conference
1st – 2nd April: Design Market

Tallinn Music Week 2016 in numbers:

250 artists from 30 countries
34 676 festival visitors
1036 delegates
624 international delegates
132 international journalists
70 festival venues
113 755 unique visits to the website from 144 countries
More info: www.tmw.ee

Comments by festival delegates:

Anthony Semaan, Beirut Jam Sessions:
“TMW is probably the most interesting, well-organized, diverse and important festival in this new era of music around the world. The fact that so many people from around the world flew in to be a part of it and showed genuine interest in collaborating with others proved to me that it was more than just a musical event. The city itself is gorgeous despite the cold weather (hey, I’m from the Middle East, it’s boiling there), everyone and everything was just so friendly all the time. In the long run one day we’re going to look back at TMW as one of festivals that had a huge impact on societies across numerous regions.“

Kate Connolly, The Guardian:
“A flurry of fantastic music, discussion and most importantly the chance to dance – in some incredible venues around Tallinn. Punk rockers and folk singers, scientists and start up gurus all met to share ideas and music. Fantastic food and fashion was also added to the amazing mix. It was a very inspiring few days, at what is certainly one of Europe’s best music festivals.”

John Robb, Louder Than War:
“TMW is now the key cutting edge music event in Europe. I can’t believe the diversity of music I saw this weekend and I only scratched the surface. One minute it was an orchestra, the next stunning original take on folk from Maarja Nuut. One minute I had intense chats with orchestra conductors learning about classical music and the next watched Angolan hip hop and then hung out with the brilliant Sireenid choir – there was not one boring second in the whole event.
I loved the Creativity for Change part of the festival – an interesting flux of people tried to find solutions with music as the glue, optimism instead of grinding pessimism. Music with a purpose. Every gig should have a reason and every song should have a soul.“

Brian Reich, Littlemedia.com:
“It was an honour to participate in Tallinn Music Week and the Creativity for Change forum.  There were so many people sharing smart ideas, showing their passion and committing themselves to efforts that improve the world and tackle the biggest issues of our time.  Tallinn is a hub for people who are doing ambitious and important work to address serious issues, and is a wonderfully creative, passionate stage for music, arts, food and more. We will all benefit from being part of what is happening in Tallinn.”

Ramin Sadighi, Hermes Records:
„Coming to the content, what impressed me the most was the sensitively handpicked and designed conferences and talks. Most of them were quite distant from the formal and predictable talks and panels, which we all may experience dozens of times throughout the year without getting inspired. But the topics and panellists on TMW were straight-forward, authentic, challenging, honest, demanding and hesitant of falling in the trap to become posturing.“

Damien McGuinness, BBC:
“This festival is a stimulating mash-up between innovative music, ancient folk songs, international politics and human rights — a Baltic speciality that is a natural fit in this fascinating region. That’s because music in Estonia is about more than simply listening to something funky. Throughout Estonia’s history song has been political. During centuries of foreign oppression music safeguarded a unique national identity. And in the dying days of the Soviet Union, song galvanised the opposition movement that led to national independence. Today Tallinn shows that artists can still help save the world.”