Kannel with 7- bronze strings

Estonian musician Toivo Sõmer playing different type of lutes: mediaeval, renaissance, arabic, rubap (asian longneck lute),  mandola, bouzouki etc. He is also very fond of archaic type of zithers and like to play often: mediaval  lyre, estonian kannel (type of  zither) with 7-bronze strings, 10 - steel strings. Toivo  made developements and technical inventions, emprovements to kannel creating  new instrument - toitar- with microtonal option and additional tuning system.

Toivo have large spectre of musical interests and he is envolved in many bands and  projects performing  ancient- Greek, european mediavel and renaissance music, estonian and swedish  traditional music (encluding folk chorals and runosongs), celtic-irish folk, japanese traditional and udmurtian -fennougrican archaic music. Toivo has a background as classical guitar player/  teacher and  had intensive period of playing jazz music (mostly hes own compositions). Still sometimes happens that he makes projects with more free improvisational approach and creating new tunes as well.