Having been part of various orchestras, he has accompanied Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra and Paul Anka in New York, but his best-known and brightest note was his nearly 28-year collaboration with jazz pianist Don Shirley's trio. This was the basis of the Oscar-winning movie, The Green Book.
Jüri Täht was born on May 26, 1930 in Tartu. In the same year his father, Georg, started working as a doctor at the Viljandi hospital, and consequently, Jüri's pre-war childhood was spent in Viljandi.
In his autobiography “Tähelend” (Star Flight, Jüri Täht, The Man from The Green Book) he wrote that when he first heard the sound of the cello on the radio as a child, he immediately knew that he wanted to play that instrument. That's how he got his first cello as a Christmas present at the age of five. His instrument studies progressed so well that after a few years he appeared on Felix Moor's Children's Hour on the radio. To the chagrin of his cello teacher, the talented student's family decided to leave for Germany in 1941 because of the Soviet invasion of Estonia.
There, too, 13-year-old Jüri took first place in his age group at the Stuttgart Conservatory's competition for young instrumentalists. After graduating from Gymnasium in the Geislingen refugee camp in 1947, Jüri started studying at the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he studied the cello until January 1951, when he emigrated to the United States.
In the USA, as a gifted student, he received a scholarship to Dana College in Nebraska, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1952. After being drafted into the armed services, Jüri Täht joined the US Air Force as a volunteer and served in the US Air Force Symphony Orchestra in Washington for four years.
He received his master's degree in 1958 from the Manhattan School of Music. From there, he worked as a freelance artist-cellist in various orchestras on Broadway and elsewhere until 1983, when he began to transmit messages of freedom to his home country of Estonia through the Soviet jammers at the American Voice radio station, where he worked until his retirement in 1996.
Jüri Täht joined Korp! Revelia fraternity in 1957. As a close friend of Revelus Harald Raudsepp, he was one of the founders of the Estonian-Revelia Academic Fund, which has supported the university studies of hundreds of young Estonians by distributing scholarships funded from Harald Raudsepp’s estate.
Jüri Täht spent the last years of her life in Estonia on the homestead of her husband Carmen's father, August Nieländer, in Vana-Kuuste near Tartu.
Jüri Täht has been awarded the Estonian Republic’s White Star V Class Order of Merit and Revelia’s Distinguished Service Cross. Jüri Täht was sent on his last way on December 4 from the Tartu Crematorium. He will be mourned by his widow and son with their family.
