Brian Eno’s Airport Music gets acoustic performance in Tallinn
Thursday 27th August 2026 on 20:30 in
Estonia
Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” will be performed acoustically at Tallinn Seaplane Harbour on Friday evening, ERR reported. Percussionist Vambola Krigul has adapted the work for acoustic instruments and singers.
Released in 1978, the British composer and visual artist’s work became a pioneering piece and cult album in the ambient music genre.
Eno wrote the music after a frustrating experience at Cologne Airport, where intrusive background music heightened people’s anxiety and fear of flying. He wanted to create music that would blend into its surroundings and have a calming, pleasant effect.
The work was first performed on stage by the American contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, which also brought it to Tallinn audiences in 1999. The new arrangement will be performed by an ERSO chamber ensemble and Collegium Musicale.
“This music exists only on the record. Brian Eno has made graphic scores, but they are more art projects than comprehensible musical notation,” Krigul said. “First I had to transcribe the 45 minutes of music from the record, then write it out and arrange it. A fairly big challenge is figuring out how to forget the original.”
He said the acoustics of Seaplane Harbour presented another challenge.
“I like unpredictability and space as an instrument, and how the space starts to play with the work,” Krigul said. He described the venue as an unusual and interesting, but relatively difficult, “instrument” from the performers’ perspective. For the sound engineer in particular, he said, it is difficult to make everything sound right.
At the same time, Krigul said the work was ideal for performance at Seaplane Harbour. The venue’s approximately 20-second reverberation could imitate an airport and an environment filled with enormous noise, which the performers would try to wrap in calm sounds “like a cloud where people could calm down.”
“Music for Airports” will be performed at the ERSO Audio Spa concert series at Tallinn Seaplane Harbour on Friday evening.