“Baar Amsterdam”: Jacques Brel with music, Tartu Uus Teater

A performance to Jacques Brel’s music.

There are few places that stay put at the edge of the world: places where people meet, meet again and find themselves again. It is better when wine flows there, music flows and tender words flow that move the soul. “Baar Amsterdam” is a place and a moment where the world of Jacques Brel, with its bright sound, meets the question of what we must live through and go through for the beauty we embrace to be born.

A spotlight. A microphone. A leader with an axe-carved face. “Don’t leave me,” he sings, his soul open and his face glowing from the strain.

Brel’s aim was to tell stories whose core was always built on emotion. He placed himself as the direct transmitter of his work, grabbing people with word and song. This production has the same aim: to take the audience on a journey to the outer edges of the human soul, to touch the corners where we have been battered together. But it also asks: would this battering even exist if there were no artist’s opening, no person’s openness, no outer and inner burning?

The production moves from the light, the uplifting and the touching into depth, and does not avoid disturbing questions: what the other side is, unavoidable, and whether the justification is justified.

The room is a salon-like meeting place. The form of Brel’s songs themselves is theatrical from top to bottom. The main thing is that wine flows in “Baar Amsterdam”.

On stage: Jarmo Reha, Jaak Lutsoja (accordion) and Aili Nael.

Author and director: Jarmo Reha. Artists: Ulvi Tiit and Allan Appelberg. Dramaturgical assistance: Laur Kaunissaare. Song translation: Indrek Koff. Sound: Lauri Kaldoja. Lighting: Sasha Mirson.

Premiere: 13 December 2025 at the Ekspeditsioon studio in Krulli house.

Time and place: 29 November 2026, 19:00, Tartu Uus Teater, Lai 37, Tartu.