When Aija Brikmane watched her then-husband Nauris Brikmanis perform the song “Tikai tev” on a 2011 television stage, she saw a love that divorce had not erased — and within a year the couple was married again, Santa reported. Now, 14 years after that wedding, the pair stands behind a November 21 concert in Riga.
This is the backstory Aija, Brikmanis’s wife, laid out in an interview with Santa as the musician prepares for “Dziļi Violets. Citā gaismā,” a concert at the Pauze cultural venue on November 21 featuring Brikmanis alongside Valters Osis, Viesturs Volfs, Edgars Jercums and Nauris Babris.
The song, the split, the encore
- Brikmanis wrote “Tikai tev” for Aija, and performing it on TV in 2011 — while they were divorced — is what brought them back together.
- The couple engaged after that 2011 show, married a year later, and have now been married 14 years.
- Brikmanis left Radio SWH’s morning show “Trādi rīti” in August, saying the touring-and-broadcast schedule had become too heavy.
A guitar, a party, and a few chords of devotion
The story begins in 2008, when the two started dating. At a party, Brikmanis picked up a friend’s guitar and played Aija a song he had just written on the spot. “It had a few chords and a fairly short text, whose main idea was: ‘Aija, I love you…'” Aija recalls.
As they moved in together, Brikmanis began playing piano more and composing songs. One of the first, Aija believes, was “Es dzīvošu” — a song about his struggle with vegetative dystonia.
“Tikai tev” and the television moment that reversed a divorce
The song closest to Aija’s heart is “Tikai tev,” which gained wider recognition in 2011 when Brikmanis performed it at a concert with the television show “O!Kartes skatuve” group Nu Un. “Tikai tev was a song about our love, with a beautiful visualization created by Nauris,” she remembers.
The key detail is that the two were divorced when the performance took place. Aija watched the broadcast on television, and it moved her deeply. “I saw how much he loved me, and how much our divorce hurt him. And I truly felt how much I loved him,” she says. “Thanks to the show, I saw Nauris in a different light.”
After the show, the pair got engaged, and a year later they married.
Fourteen years of marriage, and a concert years in the making
During the marriage, Aija has watched many songs come to life — about love and relationships, about disappointment, loss and sadness, about being on stage and on the road, and about being a father and a husband. The songs were made in close collaboration with Brikmanis’s friends and bandmates Osis, Volfs, Jercums and Babris, who join him on stage on November 21.
Aija does not hide her anticipation. The concert, she says, will be “beautiful, perhaps a little emotional, but definitely heartfelt, light and bright.”
Why Brikmanis walked away from Radio SWH’s morning show
In August, the musician left his job on Radio SWH’s morning show “Trādi rīti.” He admitted that although he had hoped to combine the new job with stage life, he realized the pace had become too much. “Performances often end at night. If you perform in Alūksne or Rēzekne, you get home in the morning light. One day you go to sleep at six in the morning, the next you wake up at six. The body is confused,” Brikmanis told Privātā Dzīve. This time, the choice fell in favor of music.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2008 | Brikmanis and Aija begin dating; he writes her a song at a party |
| 2011 | “Tikai tev” performed on “O!Kartes skatuve” with Nu Un — while the couple is divorced |
| After 2011 | The pair gets engaged, then marries a year later |
| 14 years | Length of the Brikmanis marriage as of the interview |
| August | Brikmanis leaves Radio SWH’s “Trādi rīti” |
| November 21 | “Dziļi Violets. Citā gaismā” concert at the Pauze cultural venue, Riga |
“I’ve been waiting for this concert for many years,” Aija says.
