Maarja Nuut is a fiddler and singer from the Viru region of Northern Estonia who is fascinated by the tunes of old village musicians as well as Indian ragas and the giddy, yet ultimately controlled patterns of folk dance. In her music Maarja leans strongly on tradition, and in the old tunes seeks a bridge that can bring them up to the present day and allow them to commune with us in the here and now. Her tunes are imbued with the voices of nature, old songs and the violin’s myriad nuances of sound, all of which take the listener on a sensory journey through time and space. Maarja’s style is precise and minimalistic, yet at the same time filled with an abundance of energy and keen perception. On this journey listeners can forget themselves in a whirling dance accompanied by the fire and vitality found in the playing of old village musicians, sit on a cloud swinging their legs back and forth while pondering the nature of the universe, and fly with the songs and tunes over the landscapes Maarja has created. In addition to her own music Maarja plays in the group Knihv and the international ensemble Ethno in Transit, with whom she has performed throughout Europe and in Australia as well. Maarja Nuut’s first CD Soolo appeared in the spring of 2013. As the title implies, the CD is indeed the fruit of her own efforts, yet seeks nevertheless to forge dialogue through its open spirit. For Maarja traditional music is a means of developing her own intuition and understanding of the world. Writing about Soolo in the magazine fRoots, Andrew Cronshaw said: “Maarja has been absorbing the spirit of village tunes and songs and of the people who’ve played and sung them, finding material and approaching it in ways unlike anyone else in Estonia. /–/ Soolo might be described as minimalist, but there’s a warmth and completeness to it, a feeling of being sung and played to in a quiet wooden house among the wide skies, marshes, silver-birch and dark pine forests of the Estonian countryside, and, as on a walk in a favourite special place, each time round brings a new perception.”
