Guest Professor at Tartu University

I first went to Estonia during the last of the Soviet years - and there certainly were times when I found myself thinking that this really was not what I was supposed to be doing with my life...

But once I got settled in, the enchantment of Tallinn as a fairy-tale city fell upon me, as did the charm of Estonians and Russians alike, who were so glad to meet someone working with humanist values... So that I understood why my friend Lonny Gold had said "You've simply got to go to Estonia", and why I said "OK" without really knowing why...

After that there were repeated visits.

Raho Langsepp saw the possibilities for me to enhance the early-music life of the university city of Tartu, at first completely improvised in the little meeting room of the Catholic church - virtually closed down during the post-war years - where people just came when they had time: to sing, to play, to talk English, to discover themselves...

It ended up with my working with Aasa Must -a 'soul of fire' who makes so many things possible for so many people! -as guest professor at the Arts Centre for a number of years, leading all kinds of activities under the theme of Musica Humana  - music-making as a means for people to find themselves, to discover that they can do things they previous believed were impossible ...

There are examples of some projects with Camerata Tartuensis on the 'conductor' page, and the Camerata has its own site here.