Rauno Remme can be considered one of Estonia’s first multimedia artists.
He is a composer whose oeuvre, equally with the musical creations, is filled with visual and multimedia concepts, he has composed music for chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras, created videos, electronic, electroacoustic and multimedia works, audio and video installations, film and theatre music.
Rauno Remme is also the founder of the 1993 established Electronic Music Studio of the Estonian Academy of Music.

Rauno Remme has studied piano with Ülle Sisa at the Tallinn Music High School (1975–1983), oboe with Tulike Loorits (1980–1983), music theory and composition with Heino Lemmik and Alo Põldmäe (1980–1986). In 1991, he graduated cum laude as a composer from the Tallinn Conservatoire with Prof. Jaan Rääts. From 1996 to 1997, he took studies on film and video art at the Tallinn Pedagogical University and studied multimedia at the Estonian Academy of Arts. His post-graduate composition studies started in 1993 with Erkki-Sven Tüür and Lepo Sumera at the Estonian Academy of Music remained unfinished.
He went several times to the University of Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy to complement his studies, and in 1992, he took part in the new music summer courses in Darmstadt. In 1994, he visited the studio of the New York City University, and in the same year, he presented his multimedia exposition at Ohio Northern University. In 1996, his video work Piilutorn [Peeptower] received a Grand Prix in the exhibition Estonia as a Sign at the of Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia.
Over the period 1989–1992, Remme served as the head of the Sound Production Service for students at the Tallinn Conservatory, until 1999, he was the head of the Electronic Music Studio of Estonian Academy of Music, and until 2001, lecturer. Also, he worked as a sound engineer (Klesment Audio Productions / ARM Music, 2000-2001).

In the days of the Tallinn Music High School, Rauno Remme and his friend and table-mate Eerik Semlek brought together the improvisation ensemble Grotest, which offered sort of an alternative activity to academic education, and involving various members, existed until 1991. In many cases, it was Grotest that supported his creative ideas and (co-)performers and promoters of his works were members of the ensemble.
Additionally, to composing, Rauno Remme participated in performances by artist Jaan Toomik, wrote surrealist poetry in different languages, he was engaged in macro photography, programming and translating (for example, he translated a book by Leonard Cohen). In the last few years of his life, one of his greatest passions was collecting music from the world’s nations. His interest in other cultures is reflected in implicit ideas, parody, as well as direct quotations in several of his works – “Georgia”, “Chinese Opera”, “Spain”, “Railway to London”.

Rauno started to generate his ideas, sometimes crazy for outsiders, and realising them in music, visual arts and life already in his early adolescence. Rauno was a person, who was able to find equal aesthetic satisfaction in early music and the trash left by the Soviet army, a curious behaviour of animals and ocean, sticking absurd messages on the lift wall and a superbly sounding Arabian drum, inventing meaningless languages and observing a prepared rat, an angry Arabian cursing because he was filmed and scratching radio stations or television channels, the architecture of a power station and love. (Anneli Remme)

Rauno Remme died unexpectedly and tragically on 10th or 11th March in 2001, being only 33 years old.
In 2004, Rauno Remme memorial concert Hommage à Remme by ensemble Cyber Studio took place, and a memorial exhibition was organized in the Tallinn Art House.

© EMIC 2010