The Estonian master celebrates today his eightieth birthday. Q2 is hosting a twenty-four-hour Pärt marathon, which will include a live webcast of a New Juilliard Ensemble concert at the Met Museum. Joel Sachs, the director of the New Juilliard, and his longtime collaborator Cheryl Seltzer first presented Pärt's music back in 1981, on a Continuum Ensemble program devoted to the Soviet avant-garde. This was three years before the ECM label's release of Tabula Rasa, which inaugurated the international Pärt phenomenon. Manfred Eicher, ECM's head, has compiled a satisfying two-disc survey of Pärt works, entitled Musica Selecta.
