Between Two Sounds

Joonas Sildre is an Estonian comic artist, illustrator, and graphic designer who specializes in biographical books. Adam Cullen is a freelance translator of Estonian prose, poetry, and drama.

A biography of a classical composer in the form of a graphic novel? How gauche! But author and illustrator Joonas Sildre, like his subject, isn’t afraid to “bend the rules.” Betweeen Two Sounds, colorfully drawn in black and white, tells the improbable story of the embattled Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who runs afoul of Soviet culture ministers, suffers an eight-year self-imposed writer’s block, but emerges triumphant with a new sound. The book ends in 1980, at the cusp of Pärt’s stardom, but it’s a terrific coup, deploying a pop culture format, innovatively drawn, to reveal the struggles of a beloved living composer. —Tom Huizenga, producer, NPR MusicSildre’s exceptional biography of the experimental Estonian composer finds novel ways to visualize his revolutionary sound. The comics storytelling translates the minimalist beauty and power of Pärt’s music to the page. … Lovers of art and music will be inspired. —Publishers Weekly, starred reviewJoonas Sildre’s graphic biography Between Two Sounds is about Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s lifelong quest to break new ground. … The art does an exceptional job of expressing the power of music in a visual format. … A perfect graphic novel introduction to the life and work of an acclaimed modern master of music. —Foreword ReviewsTo create this book, illustrator Sildre (Messages from Ukraine) conducted research for roughly ten years and collaborated with Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Now 88, Pärt is the world’s second most performed living composer. A remarkable tale that’s enriched with few words and plenty of neutral-toned illustrations, it beautifully spotlights movement and the music of Pärt. —Library JournalSildre brilliantly uses simple lines – presented in swirls, circles, empty musical staffs – to explicate, connect, and enhance Pärt's creative and emotional musical journeys, moving up, down, straight, corkscrew, around and around, and continuing off the pages. Sildre's art radiantly confirms Pärt will not be contained, spreading his music throughout the world. —Shelf AwarenessTo capture in visual form this incredible movement in a great composer’s soul is difficult. To capture it in comic panels, using only white, black, and sepia, is remarkable. Yet that is what Sildre has done: in keeping with Pärt’s conviction that at its heart reality is simple, he has distilled the stirring epic of a Soviet-era struggle for an authentically religious artistic voice down to a clear, straightforward, visually streamlined tale. —Comment MagazineThe monochrome tones and sepia tints mute the palette like a Baltic midwinter, a visual echo of the stark, meditative quality of Pärt’s music. Yet the style never feels austere. There is a kinetic energy in Sildre’s gestural line, which makes figures and objects seem to quiver with life, as well as in dreamlike touches such as an image of the composer’s tiny silhouette in triplicate, leaping onto a keyboard where his very hands are playing. The sense of motion is heightened by the recurring motif of a black dot that orbits throughout the book: sometimes it stands for a musical note or series of notes; sometimes for the seed of new life falling into a womb.—Today's American CatholicMore than just a treat for Pärt enthusiasts, the graphic novel speaks to anyone familiar with the struggle of remaining true to oneself amidst external pressures. It’s a tribute to Pärt’s unwavering commitment to his art and his belief in the power of silence as a gateway to new creative expression. —Estonian WorldAn extraordinary, unique, informative and fascinating read from start to finish. It is an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as community and college/university library Classical Musician Biography/Memoir collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. —Midwest Review of BooksEstonian graphic artist and writer Joonas Sildre’s unusual biography of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, with whom he collaborated for the project, tells in graphic-novel form the story of Pärt’s musical pilgrimage to discover how music communicates as a language. The illustrations attempt to convey visually and aesthetically what it is to experience Pärt’s music; the spare style of both makes use of space, silence, line, and form. Sildre and Pärt share an appreciation for the mysterious language of images and silence. —Mars Hill Audio...A striking and skillfully visualized book. Simple achromatic panels, punctuated at key moments by bold, attention-grabbing splash pages in stark black and white. It’s an effective visual representation of Pärt’s musical style, most notably the minimalist tintinnabuli style that he pioneered and that is known to Western audiences through such pieces as Spiegel im Spiegel (1978). —Current MagazineI confess that I had not previously heard of Arvo Pärt, the subversive Estonian musician and Soviet exile. This graphic novel led me to listening to hours of Pärt’s compositions, digging into his history as a dissident, and studying his technique. What tied it all together for me was his faith and the remarkable story told so creatively by Sildre and his graphics. … The narrative flows smoothly through the well-written dialogue and clean artwork. The black, white, and greyscale was appropriate to the era and Joonas Sildre is a master of drawing music. —Bradley Jersak, Clarion JournalThis book would be a great gift, obviously, for any fan of Arvo Pärt’s music, but also for those interested in contemporary classical music and for artists and creatives in general, since the book’s main theme is creativity and finding one’s distinctive voice, in dialogue with tradition – even when it is politically incorrect. —Julian Kwasniewski, Tradition and SanityThis graphic novel is filled with novel graphics. Most remarkable among them is Sildre’s explicit visualization of musical notes. Despite the apparent aggressiveness of their passage through the air, theirs is not so much a spirit of confrontation as of enlightenment. With the premiere of each new work, those fortunate enough to have been present are shaken to the core by a thrum to which they had, until then, turned a muffled ear. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt didn’t so much redefine modernism as turn it inside out to remind us of where it originates. —Tyran Grillo, ECM Records and BeyondThis unusual book is stunning if only for the sheer audacity of producing a “lives of the great composers”-style graphic novel about a ... post-Soviet musician, a cartoon book in the style of Maus or Persepolis that traces the biography of spiritual minimalism’s most commercially successful representative. ...The imaginative visual milieu with stylized staffs and noteheads is a nice touch and the reading experience is pleasant and fast-paced. —Michael Schell, Sequenza 21