Estonian guitarist Jaak Sooäär returns to Pittsburgh following a 2016 Jazz Poetry performance with his quintet. 2016 was Jaak’s first ever U.S. performance, coming directly to Pittsburgh from Estonia just for the festival. The Jaak Sooäär Trio is most known for their album The Mighty Five, nominated as best album of the year by JazzTimes in 2015. It’s an improvised exploration of titans in Russian classical composers, translated to jazz. Listening to the album, and their live performances, is like sheer exhilaration—and with this concert we think you’ll be lifted into a musical euphoria and transported right from your couch to a jazz club in Estonia!

The Sooäär Trio will collaborate with well known Estonian novelist and poet Kai Aareleid, the 2016 Estonian writer of the year.

Kai Aareleid (b. 1972) is an award-winning Estonian poet, prose writer, and translator. She is author of two poetry collections and several books of prose. Translations of her poems were included in the anthology New Baltic Poetry, (Parthian Books, 2018) and her novel Burning Cities was published by Peter Owen Publishers in 2018. She is currently a freelance writer, translator, and performer, sharing her life between Tallinn and a North-Estonian fishing village.

Jazz Poetry Month: The Jaak Sooäär Trio ft. Poet Kai Aareleid