The trip to Estonia was as enjoyable as it was cold (a bone-brittling -12 degrees at one point.) Three gigs in three days, with Tim Bowness and two musicians I’d never met… I’d love to say how incredibly challenging it was to put together, but in truth Aleksei and Robert are such skilled musicians that it seemed effortless. We had one day of rehearsal, and it felt like we’d been playing together for years.
Tim Bowness, Aleksei Saks, Peter Chilvers, Robert Jürjendal
The gigs were in beautiful locations – a country home surrounded by snowy pines, a chilly church in Tartu, and the Niguliste Church in Tallinn, my favourite of the three. With a natural reverb time of eleven seconds, it takes only a few notes to fill the room, and as a side bonus, the 200 strong audience sounded like 2000.
There’s some mobile ‘phone footage of one of the songs below. That gig was also filmed at higher quality, so hopefully we’ll have more at a later date.
Incidentally, I thought I’d made up the word “brittling”, but it turns out it already existed. Disappointing.