Erkki-Sven Tüür

Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer, born in 1959 in Kärdla on the island of Hiiumaa. He studied flute and percussion in Tallinn, then composition with Jaan Rääts at the Tallinn Academy of Music and privately with Lepo Sumera. In 1979 he founded the rock group In Spe, which he later left to devote himself to concert music. His symphonies, concertos and choral works mix tonal and atonal writing. Tüür's early pieces combined Gregorian chant, minimalism, rock and twelve-tone techniques; he later developed a vector-based method of composition, first used in Oxymoron.