On October 25, see Even If I Lose Everything, Dorian Supin’s third and final documentary about Estonian master composer Arvo Pärt, with a panel featuring celebrated virtuosos Peter Bouteneff, David Lang, and Paavo Järvi to follow! This program takes place alongside celebrations of the composer this season at Carnegie Hall, including an October 23 performance with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, and will be conducted in the presence of H.E. Alar Karis, President of Estonia, H.E. Heidy Purga, Estonia’s Minister of Culture, and H.E. Kristjan Prikk, Estonia’s Ambassador to the United States.
Perhaps the most personal installment of Supin’s series, this intimate portrait steps closer to the man behind the music, showing his many sides in a domestic setting as a composer, husband, father, and grandfather as he navigates the demands of his legacy. Once known as the avant-garde firebrand driven from his country by Soviet censorship for his radically prayerful melodies, Even If I Lose Everything centers on the gentler rhythms of Pärt’s days back home on the eve of his 80th birthday.
The film draws its title – and much of its stories – from flashes of Pärt’s workbooks, all of which he has kept close through endless personal and political upheavals. Throughout his decades of writing music, he has filled the workbooks with contemplations expressing his moments of grief and joy, his discoveries, worries, and experiences. The musings and recollections inspired by these notes, in parallel with glimpses of domesticity, come together to reveal a composer committed to living a life in accordance with the music he creates: meditative, emotionally evocative, spacious, and grounded in the realm of the sacred.
Pärt’s music has insinuated itself deep into the cultural landscape, not only as a phenomenon extending far beyond the usual classical listenership. It has enriched countless films and dance compositions, it has inspired the work of visual artists and architects. And although his musical style is rarely imitated in a direct fashion, he has influenced contemporary composers in ways that may be less obvious. How does this gentle music make such a broad and deep impact? The panel conversation will draw us deeper into Pärt’s cultural resonance.
“Deeply stirring and inspiring…” – Daniel Siuba, FilmObsessive
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
PETER BOUTENEFF
Musician and theologian Peter Bouteneff is frequently called upon to lecture or write about the music of Arvo Pärt in settings worldwide. He is professor of systematic theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, in New York, where he also is founding director of the Institute of Sacred Arts. He co-founded the Arvo Pärt Project which has been exploring and presenting the music of Arvo Pärt since 2012. The author of numerous published essays on Pärt, his book Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence (SVS Press, 2015) has become a standard text, with published translations in Estonian and Ukrainian. He also co-edited, with Jeffers Engelhardt and Robert Saler, Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred (Fordham, 2021). He is a member of the Artistic Advisory Board of the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa, Estonia, where he has enjoyed multiple stints as scholar in residence.
DAVID LANG
David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world, with his opera the little match girl passion earning him the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. His opera prisoner of the state (with libretto by Lang) was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s De Doelen Concert Hall, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and Bruges’s Concertgebouw, and premiered June 2019 in New York (conducted by Jaap van Zweden). prisoner of the state received its UK premiere in January 2020 with the BBC Symphony (conducted by Ilan Volkov) and its EU premiere in May 2023 with the Bochum Sinfoniker (conducted by Steven Sloane). Lang is a Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music. He is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can.
PAAVO JÄRVI
Estonian Grammy Award-winning conductor Paavo Järvi is widely recognised as one of today’s most eminent conductors, enjoying close partnerships with the finest orchestras around the world. He serves as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Artistic Director of The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and as both the founder and Artistic Director of the Estonian Festival Orchestra. Each season concludes with two weeks of performances and conducting masterclasses at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia, which Paavo Järvi founded in 2011. The success of both the Festival and its resident ensemble – the Estonian Festival Orchestra – has led to high-profile recordings and tours throughout Europe and Asia. In September 2025 Alpha Classics released the orchestra’s sixth album entitled Credo, which pays tribute to Arvo Pärt on his 90th birthday. This Autumn Paavo Järvi also leads the Estonian Festival Orchestra in performances of Pärt’s iconic music, on tour to Tallinn, Zürich, Vienna, and Hamburg, culminating with the orchestra’s USA debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall. As a dedicated supporter of Estonian culture, Paavo Järvi was awarded the Order of the White Star by the President of Estonia in 2013.
This program has been supported by the Monika and Charles Heimbold Fund for Exhibitions and Programs.
