International contemporary music festival AFEKT 2026
The AFEKT festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The anniversary theme, “Zeitraum””, raises questions about how contemporary music relates to time, space, the environment and change, and how musical composition reflects the world we live in. Over a quarter of a century, the festival, which began amid the ruins of St John’s Church in Tartu, has become an integral part of the contemporary music landscape in Estonia and Europe. AFEKT is a meeting place where Estonian contemporary music intertwines with new international trends and ideas.
At the heart of the festival is a commitment to presenting established classics of contemporary music alongside works being created here and now, while continuing to build connections between Estonian composers and performers and the world’s leading composers, ensembles and festivals.
The anniversary festival opens with Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Zeitraum, the inspiration behind AFEKT 25’s theme, “Time and Space”. Tüür’s role in shaping Estonian contemporary music can hardly be overstated. As a leading symphonist on today’s European contemporary music scene and one of the founders and artistic directors of AFEKT’s predecessor, the NYYD festival, he has helped create the conditions in which Estonia’s contemporary music landscape has emerged and developed.
AFEKT 25 brings longstanding artistic allies and collaborators to Tallinn. Performers include Neue Vocalsolisten, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble, trumpeter Marco Blaauw, Uusinta Ensemble and the international Track3. Estonia’s music scene is represented by, among others, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra; the Tallinn New Music Ensemble, led by Arash Yazdani and a recipient of an Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation prize this year; clarinettist Taavi Orro; and violinist Toomas Hendrik Ellervee.
AFEKT 25 also extends the listening experience beyond conventional concert formats. Lauri Lest’s “Orchestra of Objects” gives household appliances and furniture a new lease of life, transforming discarded objects into musical instruments. Aivar Tõnso’s “Becoming Sound”, for nonspeaker orchestra, explores the relationships between physical materials, space and electronic sound. Materials become resonating surfaces and objects become instruments, prompting reflection on contemporary consumer society and the ecological crisis: what do we consider waste, which materials do we value, and how long does an object’s life last?
An important strand of AFEKT’s activities has been its showcase concerts in Tokyo, Berlin, Cologne and elsewhere, alongside longstanding collaborations with partners such as the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Musikfabrik, ensemble mosaik and Neue Vocalsolisten. These connections have led to new collaborative projects, commissions and performances, helping Estonian music reach major contemporary music platforms and festivals across Europe and beyond. This year’s showcase concert takes place on 18 November at Theaterhaus Stuttgart, in collaboration with the contemporary music organisation Musik der Jahrhunderte.
AFEKT 25’s “Zeitraum” encompasses more than musical time and space. It offers an opportunity to consider today’s world through listening. The works performed at the festival weave together nature and technology, memory and the future, humanity and the environment, the individual voice and societal pressure. Contemporary music does not necessarily offer ready-made answers to these questions. Instead, it creates situations in which we can perceive change, rupture and continuity, the fragility of the environment and our capacity to shape it. AFEKT 25 invites us to listen to the present as a space in time where past and future coexist, and where every new sound may mark the beginning of a possible future.
Every second is a gateway.