Kristin Kalnapenk

One day, when I was eleven, a verse drifted through my head and I realised it was mine. Songs have kept coming ever since: at the guitar, at the piano, and often just in the quiet of my head. Most of them get caught in ink, in a notebook, before they’re caught anywhere else. At concerts you hear that same ink, sung live over the band’s improvisations.

From the fourth grade I lived twelve years in Spain. I write lyrics in Estonian, English, and Spanish, and I sing in each of them on stage. I’ve been performing for close to fifteen years, most often in intimate rooms: weddings, birthdays, ceremonies, and listening-room sets where the lights stay low and the music asks for patience.

I earned my bachelor’s at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and I’m finishing my master’s there now in jazz voice, composition, and pedagogy. Through EAMT’s Erasmus programme I spent time at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where the local jazz musicians and audiences took me in with real warmth.