Gregor Kulla is a composer, performance artist, writer, and critic born in Põlva, Estonia. They majored in composition at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater (with Helena Tulve and Tõnu Kõrvits, cum laude), and in oboe and composition at the Heino Eller Music School (with Anna Šulitšenko and Katrin Aller, with honours). They studied sustainable art creation at the EU School of Participation 2021 in Novi Sad, Serbia, and at the moment they are studying at University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.
Their work deals with gender studies, feminism, minority and queer cultures, drag culture and Eastern philosophies. Often their music is seen and heard as something seemingly unchanging, which preserves itself only through constant change. Kulla’s piano quintet brook (2023) has been described by a British critic Simon Cummings as follows: “Nothing was still: little taps, trills and tremolos, with occasional plunks that in this rarified context sounded almost like great boulders falling from the sky, in the process begging the question of how fragile this world actually was. […] At no point did Kulla break the spell, from start to end we are immersed in pure magic.” They have written for solo instruments, ensembles, orchestras, film, performances and other stage works.
Kulla received the honorary title of city Tartu (Tartu Noor Kultuurikandja) in 2020 and, in 2021, became a laureate of Estonian main cultural newspaper Sirp. They are a recipient of the annual prize of the literary magazine Värske Rõhk, the Esimese Sammu literary award, Erkki-Sven Tüür Foundation scholarship and in 2024 they received one of Estonian main literary prize, the Betti Alver literary prize with their debut book Peenar (2024, Värske Raamat), which is described as a book that pushes boundaries. “This is a distinctive, dodecaphonic-like text corpus, written in a stream-of-consciousness style yet lightly curated—retaining its juicy richness while maintaining internal logic and coherence.” In 2024, Kulla also released a vinyl soundtrack for Kris Lemsalu & Johanna Ulfsak’s art mockumentary Old Piano (MIDA Records). In 2025 they received third place in the International Rostrum of Composers in the category of composers under 30 years of age. They have served as creative producer and assistant artistic director for the international contemporary music festival Afekt since 2021, and host the radio show (new) music w/ kulla on IDA Radio.
साँवरौ मनमोहन माई
saamvarau manmohan maai
The Beguiler of the Mind is the Color of Dusk
The title of the work comes from the 16th-century devotional Hindu 'blind poet' Surdas (Sanskrit: सूरदास, romanized: Sūradāsa), where he refers to a parrot–the parrot being himself, but in mentioning the bird the author also refers to the third verse of the Bhagavata Purana, a staple text of Hindu culture, where it is said that the narratives in the work have been given added flavour by the touch of the speaker, Shukadeva (literally ‘divine parrot'). Here is the Indian cultural conviction that what is consciously shared increases its ‘flavour’, meaning depth and value. Suradasa's poetry can be read in Estonian in Mathura's translation (“Elada, et olla ookean", Allikaäärne 2018). I thank Mathura for his help with the Hindi and English translation of Surdas’ texts.
The content of the piece is an excerpt from State of Siege (2002) by Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish. The work was written while the poet was under siege in Ramallah during the 2002 Israeli invasion.
If you shall not be a rain my love
be a tree
saturated with fertility…be a tree
and if you shall not be a tree my love
be a stone
saturated with humidity…be a stone
and if you shall not be a stone my love
be a moon
in the loved one’s dream…be a moon
An Estonian 00s pop idol, Ines’s song “Iseendale” (“To Yourself”) will be heard before the end, as if sung under the shower.