“I’m self-taught. I have taken private lessons and have been taught by good fellow musicians and my own sensitivity and attentiveness!” (Erkki Otsman)
Erkki Otsman has been performing as a singer since the early 1990s. He has composed many programmes of French chansons, including music by Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel and Michel Legrand. Apart from Piaf and Legrand, Otsman considers Luciano Pavarotti, Nino Rota, Kurt Weill, Carlos Gardel and others to be his most important role models. Otsman is a member of Les Amis d’Edith Piaf (Friends of Edith Piaf) in Paris, and he has won prizes in their singing competitions (1995, 2000, 2005) and was voted Francophone Songwriter of the Year in 2011. Otsman has collaborated with the Goethe Institute in Tallinn, performing two programmes of German cabaret songs (2003 and 2006). He has released several albums, most recently French chansons and Argentinian tangos with accordionist Allan Jakobi (2022).
