The Dialogues: Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes

i’m thrilled to be presenting the latest instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. On this occasion, i’m sitting down with Estonian composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, whose music i’ve been marvelling at ever since first contact at the 2017 Estonian Music Days. We got together at my rented apartment in Tallinn’s Old Town during last year’s Estonian Music Days festival, and i want to thank Tanja for being so generous with her time and recordings of her music, and also so open in her honest and wide-ranging responses to my questions.

Kozlova-Johannes doesn’t have a website, but information about her and her work can be found via the Estonian Music Information Centre, and she has both SoundCloud and YouTube channels. You can find all of my previous writings about her music here.

Very little of Kozlova-Johannes’ music is available on commercial releases, so most of the excerpts featured throughout the Dialogue are from live recordings and radio broadcasts. A list of all the excerpts and the approximate times when they occur are shown below, together with links to buy or stream the music. All of the below works have been added to the 5:4 YouTube channel, along with a few others that are also mentioned in the course of our discussion; the complete playlist can be found here.

List of excerpts

• 00:00:00 Tule süütamine [Lighting the Fire] [YouTube] [CD]
• 00:12:26 Prisma [YouTube]
• 00:20:07 Circles [YouTube] [CD]
• 00:29:23 Tišina (Vaikus) [Silence] [YouTube] [CD]
• 00:38:12 Karje vari [The Shadow of the Scream] [YouTube]
• 00:48:17 Purskkaev 2 [Fountain 2] [YouTube]
• 00:59:43 söövitab.tuhk [etching.ash] [YouTube]
• 01:11:26 Blow Your House Down [YouTube]
• 01:19:49 Tumedad tiivad [Dark Wings] [YouTube]
• 01:28:13 Mat’Selesnya [YouTube]
• 01:41:12 Kolm sulekest [Three Feathers] [YouTube]
• 01:50:46 Disintegration Chain [YouTube]
• 01:59:25 Lovesong [YouTube]
• 02:07:05 To Sing a Song Before the Night Comes [YouTube]
• 02:14:18 Nurgad [Corners] [YouTube] [CD]

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