| The album idea emerged in 2022 when Veeroos collaborated on a new piece with the Ensemble Musikfabrik. In cooperation with the international contemporary music festival Afekt, the piece "Ich sehe Federn wachsen im Sand der Wüsten…" was performed in Tallinn and Cologne. A concert recording made in Germany marked the composer’s initial step towards releasing an album. When the opportunity arose to collaborate with the Kairos record label, the entire plan became more concrete. "The goal was to select new chamber music pieces, including unwritten ones until 2023. The collection features both existing and new recordings. For instance, the percussion piece "Ma olen suur kuu su silmapiiril" was recorded with Heigo Rosin at the Tartu Chamber Music Days in 2020. "Schattenseele" for violin and electronics was recorded by George Kentros and Mattias Petersson in Stockholm in the spring of 2019. The newest piece on the album, "Keha" for bass clarinet, performed by Michele Marelli, was completed at the end of 2023 and recorded earlier this year in Italy," described Age Veeroos about the album’s development process. |
 Age Veeroos. Photo: Tiina Villako |
"Elusive and illusory, Age Veeroos’ music captures a unique tension between focus and ambiguity. The album "Outlines of the Night" presents compositions in which, for example, violin and electronics, as in Schattenseele, evoke corresponding sensations of a "shadow soul" through obsessive, circling motifs. In Keha for bass clarinet, physical and biological processes are musically embodied, oscillating between registers. Fantasia "A Threadbare Chant" and Ma olen suur kuu su silmapiiril further demonstrate Veeroos’ talent for combining concrete ideas with intangible expression. This album summarises her enigmatic style and offers a dreamlike exploration of sounds in which light and darkness intertwine," expressed British music critic Simon Cummings in the album’s liner notes.
Find the album "Outlines of the Night" here: Kairos
The album features contributions from Tallinn New Music Ensemble conducted by Arash Yazdani, Heigo Rosin on percussion, Talvi Hunt on synthesizer, Maria Jönsson on bass flute, Ensemble U:, There are no more four seasons – George Kentros on violin and Mattias Petersson on electronics, Ensemble Musikfabrik conducted by Clement Power, and Michele Marelli on clarinet. Recordings were engineered by Nikita Šiškov (including mastering), Renee Trei, Kaarel Kuusk, Stephan Schmidt, Mattias Petersson, Siim Mäesalu, and Enrico Tortarolo. The liner notes were written by British composer and music critic Simon Cummings, and translated into German by Marie-Luise Meier. Rene Jakobson took composer portraits.
Age Veeroos graduated in 1998 with a degree in German philology from the University of Tartu and pursued literature studies at the University of Göttingen in 1993/1994. He studied composition at the Heino Eller Music School in Tartu from 1996 to 1998 and earned a cum laude master’s degree in 2006 from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre under the guidance of Helena Tulve and Eino Tamberg.
Additionally, Veeroos completed a doctoral program at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, focusing his research on the role of sul ponticello in bowed string instruments within musical acoustical processes. He is also recognized as the recipient of the 2023 Lepo Sumera Prize for composition, awarded by the Estonian Composers’ Union and the Estonian Authors’ Society at the Pärnu Music Festival.
The album’s release was supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Authors’ Society, the Tartu Cultural Endowment, and the Heino Eller Music School.