Helena Tulve

Helena Tulve, composer (Estonia), studied composition at the Tallinn High School of Music and from 1989 to 1992 at the Estonian Academy of Music under Erkki-Sven Tüür (whose only composition pupil she remains to date). She continued her education in Jacques Charpentier’s composition class at the National Regional Conservatoire in Paris, from which she graduated in 1994 with first prize. From 1993 to 1996 she studied Gregorian chant at the Paris Conservatoire. Tulve’s compositions – most of them for chamber groups – contain a wide range of influences, including French spectral music, Gregorian chant, IRCAM experimentalism and oriental music. Tulve’s first recording for ECM’s New Series was Lijnen (2008). Six years later she released Arboles lloran por lluvia (Trees cry for rain) which explores the raw fabric of sound and the nature of timbre, incorporating aspects of Gregorian chant, melody from Yemenite Jewish tradition, and texts from Sufi, Sephardic and Christian mystic poetry.