Age Juurikas is a solo pianist and chamber musician with a powerful and suggestive style of performance, combining Russian and European traditions of piano playing. Also, she is a passionate pedagogue who has students both at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre as well as in Tallinn Music High School.
Age Juurikas has held solo concerts and performed in chamber music collectives together with several Estonian and foreign professional musicians in all over Europe and Northern America. She has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras (Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Ukranian National Academic Symphony Orchestra). Age Juurikas has collaborated with acknowledged conductors such as Neeme Järvi, Kaspars Putniņš, Arvo Volmer, Risto Joost and others.
The musician has been awarded several honorable awards by both Estonian and internationally held competitions. She has been honored with several reputable awards such as Neeme Järvi Prize 2003 and the annual sound art award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia 2014 for “being an active and original soloist and ensemble partner”.
Age Juurikas started her studies in the field of music at the age of four in the preparation course at Tallinn Music High School. She graduated Tallinn Music High School in Professor Toivo Nahkur’s piano class in 1998 and continued her studies at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre under the guidance of Professor Peep Lassmann, receiving BA in 2004. Simultaneously with her studies in Estonia, Juurikas improved her skills as an exchange student at Sibelius Academy with Professor Matti Raekallio and Professor Liisa Pohjola and at the University of Music Karlsruhe with Professor Kalle Randalu. In 2003–2007, she studied at the Moscow Conservatoire in the class of Vera Gornostayeva and her assistants Sergei Glavatsky, Maksim Filippov and Darya Petrova where she obtained Master’s degree in 2007. Professor Matti Reimann has also been one of the most influential teachers and advisers in her musician’s career. Currently, Juurikas is studying in the PhD programme at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Age Juurikas’s favourite repertoire dates back to the first half of 20th century; but she is is also intrigued by performing contemporary music and collaborating with various composers. While composing her concert programmes, Juurikas has aimed at swimming against the current – in order not to get stuck within the framework of well-known classical pieces but always include some fresh and new music.
Throughout the past years, Juurikas has taken part in several large-scale projects of contemporary music, such as Grisey’s “Vortex temporum”, Stockhausen’s “Mantra” and the premiere of Toivo Tulev’s piano concert “Nada”.
Age Juurikas has recorded all piano preludes by Mart Saar, numerous piano pieces by Scriabin and Albéniz and Estonian contemporary chamber music in various music collectives to the archive of the Estonian Public Broadcasting. Since 2017, Age is an artist of Estonian Record Productions (ERP). In early 2018, she released her debut album “The Soul of Fire” that was given the Award of the Chamber Music Piece of the Year.