Kristin Kalnapenk

One day when she was eleven, a verse drifted through her head and she realised it was her own. Songs started coming — and have kept coming, on guitar, on piano, and often just in the quiet of her mind. Most of them are first caught in ink on the page of a notebook; at concerts you’ll hear that same ink sung live over a jazz band’s improvisations.

From the fourth grade she lived twelve years in Spain. She writes lyrics in three languages — Estonian, English, Spanish — and sings in each of them on stage. She has 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.

She earned her bachelor’s at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and is completing her master’s there in jazz voice, composition, and pedagogy. Through EAMT’s Erasmus programme she spent time at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where local jazz musicians and audiences welcomed her warmly.