As always I am looking back for the last year to all the events and happenings occurred but this year is special as it will be two years in a retrospective.

2020 has not only been a crap covid year but also for me personally filled with unbelievable challenges in many ways. Both good and not so welcome things. 2019 was extremely active with a lot of travelling and a new album release, it almost felt normal to have a quiet 2020 after those turmoiled months. Not so quiet still :-)

January 2019 found me on the Folklandia cruise playing gigs with the legendary Timo Alakotila.

Together with Piret Aus, a fellow accordionist and wonderful person in all means from Viljandi! I happen to be the cover girl on all the Folklandia posters and folders!

That was my first Folklandia and I enjoyed it awfully much! Both the events in Helsinki before and after the cruise. Thanks to the Estonian Institute in Finland for backing up the Estonian artists on Folklandia 2019!

There were quite a few international guests on the cruise and one of them - the editor in chief of Songlines magazine wrote a review of the 24 h music and dance phenomenon. It was great as always to meet the friends and colleagues from different countries!

February was more quiet, with some radio work at Klassikaraadio and rehearsing for the song and dance festival in Tallinn. We also did some cross country skiing with the whole family and enjoyed the snowy days. I also took some time off after a crazy 2018 and started to work with my new solo album.

Me in action in the Radiohouse in Tallinn doing my favorite Fantaasia programme.

We also celebrated the end of Estonia 100 festivities and I had the chance to meet other artists and musicians involved.

My very own custom made signature boots by Inga Radikainen

March has always been the Tallinn Music Week month with loads of preparations, especially this year as I got a showcase and did a workshop during the festival. I also started a new collaboration for exclusive sustainable merch together with the small Estonian company SISU kott. We made small textile bags from textile waste and added the beaver print from my Storied Sounds album made by the forever wonderful Krõõt Kukkur. March also brought me another wonderful collaboration - I finally got my very own signature boots from the talented Estonian designer Inga Radikainen from Inga Radikainen / Leather accessories and shoe design.

Tuulikki Bartosik + SISU kott at Tallinn Music Week

Tuulikki Bartosik showcase at Tallinn Music Week 2019 was a result of many years hard work which I could not have done with my manager Merli Antsmaa from Open Room Agency. She really is the BEST!

Tallinn Music Week 2019 was special not only because of my showcase but because my Japanese promoter Koiwa-san together with Kamio-san aka Kaz were staying in Tallinn and North Estonia for the first time! We had the whole day in Virumaa on the shores of the Baltic Sea and in the Viru bog together!

I got to play the original Rhodes electrical piano and it fitted well with some new musical ideas for the album

April was a really exciting month as I started to record my next solo album in Stockholm together with the sound wizard Petter Berndalen in his Playing With Music studio. The fabulous musician and human being Jonas Knutsson was producing and we had some hilarious moments in the studio together. It really was an easy work to do with such professionals and I had the idea ready in my head, so I enjoyed very much the whole process. Our goal was to find the best accordion sound ever by using Matts Odemalms acoustic panels and Jörgen Thuressons mics and I have to admit that we succeeded! Until now my favourite place for recording has been the pine forest in Võrumaa South Estonia, with Matts panels we got the same sound in the studio. As the recording quality was really well planned and thought through, there was almost no need to mix and master more than to keep the original sound.

Behind the panels in the imaginary forest, the sound was travelling around me and the concentration was total

Jonas Knutsson in action - just his presence got me to play mindfully in my imaginary forest

I also got to play with two Stockholm legends in April - Lauri Anttila and Peter Bothén from WoJa duo. We had a nice gig in Haninge in South Stockholm playing some jazzy and groovy tunes and impros.

Bez and me after the game session at Somerset House

April found me in one of my absolute favourite countries - The United Kingdom, where I enjoyed spring in London and had a couple of meetings with interesting industry people. I also met Bez the game wizard at Somerset House the coolest art center, where we enjoyed playing some of Bez’s games. I recommend you to look up the stuff Bez has invented! Hilarious and intelligent games!

In May we worked on finishing the album Tempest in a Teapot in Stockholm and had enourmous fun in the studio. Sometimes only drinking high quality coffee and tea, sometimes talking about deep angles of life and sometimes playing and mixing. Just to have Jonas in the studio made me play mindfully and encouraged to come out as a hobby kannel player and also sing properly which has been my long time dream. It was such a pleasure to work with Petter and Jonas! I am forever thankful for having them in my life!

Happy faces after the hard last night - and the album is done!

I have been a fan of Finnish Swedish singer songwriter and pianist Iiris Viljanen for many years and was extremely touched when she asked me to play some free-bass accordion in her tune Landsort. She makes the listener think about the actual life and the small things in life which we so often forget.

At the end of May we filmed a little videoreel with Vita Pictura on the shores of the Baltic Sea and in Rõuge South Estonia and I felt like a film star. I was also happy to start my collaboration with one of the loveliest designers in Estonia Kairi Lentsius from Lentsius Design. I love her work and the philosophy behind it. Check her out!

June marked the beginning of the festival season and I had my first gig at the travelling culture festival Võnge festival which was held in the picturesque fishing village Altja in 2019.

I was invited to perform in Italy for the first time in my life. The festival Suoni Mobili organised my Musica Morfosi was held in Milan and its surroundings. I gave a solo concert at the festival opening. It was over 40 C but I still managed to play without feeling drowsy or tired as the audience and the outdoor stage was were so cool. My Italian Pigini accordion behaved really well in the thermic climate.

We did the festival trip together with Estonian Duo Telluur and had tremendous fun discovering Milan but also enjoyed each others performances.

July entered like a storm with Estonian Song and Dance festival celebrations where my whole family was participating. I did an arrangement for solo accordion and accordion orchestra of my tune Coming home from my coming album Tempest in a Teapot and played it live in Estonian national TV together with almost 100 accordionists from all over Estonia.

A proper celebration - it also was 150th jubilee celebration, needs a proper afterparty! I ended up in the hilarious one together with my long time friend and colleague Mari Kalkun. we were both wearing national costumes according to our roots, I had the Rõuge woman authentic costume and Mari wore Kihnu skirt.

July always marks the arriving of Viljandi Folk Music Festival. This year I performed with my Reval Etno children and youngsters, we had a proper reunion and enjoyed playing two gigs together.

August began calmly but just to get wilder at the end. I had the possibility to play at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. That was a powerful experience!

From the mid August I performed some solo concerts in Rõuge, Tartu and Võru before heading to Helsinki archipelago and Hyvinkää to play with my old friends and inspiration sources, the legends of Finnish folk scene Timo Alakotila and Maria Kalaniemi.

Rõuge Kunstikuur/Art shed, playing with guest artists, the local female diatonic accordion stars Malle Vissel and Kertu Hordo

Arrived to Helsinki and enjoyed Maria Kalaniemis beautiful garden! After a short rehearsal it was time to go on stage on the Pentala island at the archipelago museum.

Then I had the honour to play a set at Timo Alakotilas festival Kaukas EloFolk in Kaukas, Hyvinkää. That was a blast as there were several cool artists performing from real legends to young talents.

After the performance with the one and only Timo Alakotila

The festival season was still on and the next stop was RuhnuRahu festival on the magical Ruhno/Runö island.

Before that I delivered a composition made for Musicity Tallinn which took place during Tallinn Architectural Biennale. It is called Last one standing and telling a story about how trees are older than humans and remind me of our history. It was performed from a little minibus in the old Kalamaja Cemetery park, a holy place, one of the oldest cemeteries in Tallinn which was turned into a park during the Sovjet occupation.

RuhnuRahu festival was a blast! The little island is a magical place! I met so many sincere people who enjoyed my music and I celebrated my birthday together with them by playing on top of the old ligthhouse in Ruhnu. The lighthouse is rumoured to have drawn by the world famous Gustave Eiffel.

My longer solo concert was held in Ruhnu church which is the oldest wooden church in the Baltic area. It was magical to play in candlelight and feel the old vibes from Swedish choral singing echoing from the walls. I even sang an old Swedish choral myself as the surroundings were so inspirational!

The famous lighthouse of Ruhnu where I played miniconcerts on my birthday. The view was really stunning! Totally the best stage I have ever performed on!

September was my touring month! My longest ever UK tour took me from South to North and back on the big green island!

This time I toured together with Timo Alakotila and we played mostly material from my Storied Sounds album. In the beginning of the tour I had planned a trip to Scotland, the place which has inspired me since 1994 when I first visited The Highlands.

I stayed in Ullapool and had some creative days together with Scottish artist, composer, accordionist and piper Mairearad Green. We had a double headliner concert at the local art center The Ceilidh Place. I also enjoyed Scottish food, art and nature very much. A piece of my heart will always remain in the Highlands!

I took the picturesque train journey across the UK from Edinburgh to London where I met Timo who had rented a little black car which then took us from London to Newcastle and back to Cardiff and Bristol.

The first gig in London was at the Estonian Embassy where we played several sets for Open House London which is an annual festival celebrating the architecture and urban landscape of London. Again, many interesting people came to listen to us and just the Embassy house is stunning to play in!

Next stop was Sheffield and the legendary pub The Shakespeare’s, then further North to Newcastle where we also had a fun session with Baltic Crossing guys Ian Stephenson and Andy May. And back to South to Cardiff where the eminent guitarist and composer Dylan Fowler joined forces with me and Timo on the stage of the Norwegian Church. That concert was documented by the talented photographer Mari Makarov.

Two last concerts of the tour took us to Bristol and again to London where we performed in the Heath Street Baptist Church, a wonderful place for mindful music!

Timo returned to Finland and I had some more adventures in London which included meeting the original members of the cult band The Kinks in the favourite pub of the lead singer Ray Davies.

In the Estonian Embassy in London with Kadri-Liis Turton and Kersti Kirs

My old friend Hannah James was the guest artist in Sheffield

The Heath Street Baptist Church in London

Happy duo in Cardiff with the guest artist Dylan Fowler

Me and Ray Davies in London who seemed a bit fragile but still in good shape to make the most out of the party!

October is always the month of Womex - the world music expo. This year it was held in Tampere in Finland and Music Estonia organised a little preWomex happening in Viljandi for Estonian musicians. Here I am with Mari Kalkun ready to take over the world!

We then continued with the delegates from USA and Canada to Finland and enjoyed the 25th Womex together with a really powerful delegation from Estonia.

My personal highlight this year was the conference panel about gender equality in music business which I initiated and organised together with the power ladies Helen Sildna from Tallinn Music Week, the legendary Swedish folk and jazz musician Lena Willemark, Oslo World festival organiser the rocket woman Alexandra Archetti Stolen, Laia Kverneland from Tempi in Denmark and Henna Salo from Music Finland.

Power ladies after a successful panel at Womex in Tampere

November was again my touring month, this time in several countries to celebrate the release of my solo album Tempest in a Teapot. I began the release tour in Estonia by playing in Viljandi, Tartu, Võru and Tallinn. In two concerts my old friend Villu Talsi joined me on mandolin.

I really enjoyed the work with the tour as my team consisted in absolute rocket super ladies like photographer Krõõt Tarkmeel and my manager Merli Antsmaa and other hard working cool women!

I also did a tremendous amount of media work during the tour week and it was actually knocking me down at some points but the results were wonderful. That is the hard part of the artist life - answering questions and making interviews 24 h, then travelling from place to place, giving the best possible performances and trying to take care of body and mind while doing all this…

Viljandi - lay down concert was really something special as the audience was laying on the floor and there were no applauses. It was a nice challenging experience! photo by Ako Lehismets

Võru together with Villu Talsi, photo by Kristel Onno

School concert to crazy lovely kids who immediately recognised my main inspiration source - they just said that they hear wind and trees in my music.

Solo at Engelsholms Slott - the place where ghosts live

December was a bit calmer and started with the release concert in Stockholm at the legendary folk and world music venue Stallet together with Jonas Knutsson on saxophones and Petter Berndalen on percussion.

The concert was filmed and recorded and I am happy to share the magical and spontaneous moments with you in my socials. It really is magical to play with those two fantastic guys whom I know like over 20 years already!

Stallet is also a special place for me as I attended to the very first gigs there and have also played there for several times during the last 20 years.

December had one last performance for me - the premiere of my Christmas song Home for Christmas performed by my collaboration partner for many years - Stockholm Estonian Mixed Choir. The concert was held in the lovely Eric Ericsonhallen in Stockholm.

In the meanwhile I was invited to the Swedish Radio P1 popular talkshow Nordegren & Epstein to play my music and talk about it. It felt really weird as I ended up discussing the Estonian education system instead :-) But still, great first experience in a Swedish talkshow! Until then I only had visited talkshows in BBC radio and they sure are a bit different from Swedish ones.

After the Christmas concert with Stockholm Estonian Mixed Choir and the conductors Kaspar Kõrvits, Toomas Tuulse and Jaan Seim.

2020

January found me in London again, one of my favourite cities. This time I played in the Spiritland Kings Cross cosy club. It was the release of Nonclassical’s exclusive cassette Fieldwave which was released and the recording of my tune Crossing over (never made it to any of my albums) recorded in the forests of Võrumaa, was featured in the compilation. I ALWAYS enjoy London and this time as I knew that Brexit will happen soon, it was even more special. I did a day trip to Birghton and got to see the magical beach and small streets of that gem for a city. Also the food was super delicious as I am a huge fan of seafood.

Spiritland with Fieldwave and the producer and presenter Nick Luscombe

February was mostly a quiet month but I made fantastic new connections with some Swedish musicians and played some dramatised children’s concerts with them. Alice Tegnér, a female composer who has written most of the well known older Swedish popular children’s songs, was portrayed in the concert. The beautiful arrangements of her music made by Lisa Långbacka, Thomas Backman, Josefine Lindstrand and Leo Svensson Sander are stunning! I was replacing Lisa in some of the concerts as she was busy elsewhere. Listen to their album and enjoy timeless Swedish music!

There are not so many live venues in Stockholm for my kind of acoustic music. That is why I was extremely happy to play some sets at Sopköket - the little sustainable restaurant in Söder at Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm. The owner Filip Lundin is a sustainable superhero who cooks food from leftover ingredients which he gathers from all over Stockholm. The food was great and the concept with a lunch entertainment also!

Enjoyed it 100 %!

March was a strange month, I took a trip to Tallinn from Stockholm to fix my accordion and that was basically the last time Tallinks ferries trafficked the route. I was booked to play in Uppsala Art Museum at the end of the month and we immediately faced the digital challenge as covid put restrictions on the audience. But the little team was super motivated to get the concert done and we managed to stream it to the world without audience. Who could have known that this kind of event was just the beginning of a whole new era in music industry…

After the successful stream in Uppsala Art Museum

April was mostly quiet and I tried to get used to the new covid world. Concerts were cancelled, the 5 weeks tour with Akkordeonale in Germany never happened although we had been preparing for it for two years already…I started to write sheet music and took some digital composition courses from London and New York. Waited for the world to decide what is happening next. Realised that the event in Japan on the Hokkaido island is probably also postponed. Enjoyed life outdoors, slept, had good time with my family. But the insecure feeling about the future of the music industry felt creepy already.

Still something wonderful happened after the UK release of my solo album - it reached to the Songlines Top of The World chart!

May was already a bit calmer as it was obvious that the world will be put on hold for a longer time. So I decided to go digital and make a live concert from my favourite venue - the forest. The concert was streamed by Estonian Public Broadcasting.

June took me to the nature again as the organiser Harmony Fields in Japan was making a Midsummer live from Nordic countries and they wanted me to collaborate on that.. So I played my newly written waltz Sustainability and participated in the Midsummer music marathon.

I also continued to write down my music and compose new pieces. Some of it will be released in 2021. Stay tuned for some news! I am really excited to work more as a composer and will be taking the covid situation more as a challenge and not as something final and fatal.

August was a special month as I had one live gig abroad - Etno Espa festival in Helsinki. My concert was presented by the Estonian Institute in Finland. I realised how I had missed live performances and how enjoyable it really is to play to the live audience. Met some old friends, made some new friends. Already waiting to return to Finland where I always love to perform! Next year there will be concerts in Tampere and Helsinki region if the covid situation is getting better and travel restrictions disappear.

August was surprisingly also the month of Tallinn Music Week where I participated as a delegate and learned a lot of new stuff about the new situation of the music industry.

With the industry power women Merli Antsmaa and Merylin Poks

I also participated in the massive international project Global Music Match together with 96 musicians from 14 different countries. More about that in my Youtube channel.

As the restrictions were lighter in autumn, the Estonian Folk Awards event was happening in Viljandi and as I was nominated with my Tempest in a Teapot album, it was a nice break to drive to Viljandi and have good time with friends and colleagues. You can watch the whole ceremony HERE.

December has been quiet, I work with new music, new collaborations, enjoy the support and encouragement of my manager Merli Antsmaa whose presence has really been priceless in this new covid world.

Wishing you all brighter and mindful 2021! Be strong and enjoy the little things in life!