Polina Tserkassova has been telling stories in Estonian, Russian and English since 2010. She performs frequently in Estonia and abroad. So far she has recorded three storytelling albums, which are available in those three languages: “Singing Stories” (2017), “When We Grow Up” (2018) and “Birds’ Tales” (2019). Her first album was nominated for the annual literary award in Estonia in 2018, and was dedicated to her newborn daughter. For six years Polina taught Social and Cultural Anthropology at Tallinn University. She also lived in Istanbul and carried out most of her ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, studying Sufi practices and Turkish music therapy.

Polina refers to her genre of storytelling as ‘soul-centered.’ She tells traditional and modern real-life stories, tales she has composed herself as well as those she has collected on her travels and in her fieldwork. She combines storytelling with the music of the rare instruments she plays, such as the birbyne, rebab, sitar, kalimba, santur, lyra, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, flute, percussion and many others.