World Tour of music

 JURMALA - It’s been already ten years since a brilliant Latvian opera singer, Inese Galante, created one of the greatest musical events of summer in Jurmala - Summertime Festival - which unites the most talented musicians from around the world. In the course of one August week audiences are invited to take a tour into the world of music in which there are no borders between styles and genres: from classic to jazz, from baroque to popular music – each concert will bring joy and surprises!

Every year the festival traditionally opens with the Prelude, and this time it will take place in the Riga Dome Cathedral – one of the major historical and cultural landmarks, as well as Latvia capital’s concert life epicenter. Together with famous organist Aivars Kalejs and Galante’s talent competition laureates, the festival patroness Galante is offering a new program – baroque and romanticism musical pearls.

Under the cupola of the magnificent Dome Cathedral sacral works of J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, A. Vivaldi, R. Schumann, C. Saint-Saens, G. Mahler and other composers will be performed, some of them – for the first time in Latvia. Galante’s warm and rich voice and the monumental timbre of the organ will meld in a prayer for art, nature and love, touching the strings of every listener’s soul.

One of the special guests of the festival will be anartist, who is truly beloved by Latvian audiences, a real energizer - Goran Bregovic - and his splendid Wedding & Funeral Band.

Bregovic received international recognition after his collaboration with legendary Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, for whose movies ‘Time of the Gypsies’ and ‘Arizona Dream’ he wrote the music. Since then Bregovic has become a film soundtrack icon and one of the most famous Balkan music representatives in the world.
Compositions, touched by the elements of Yugoslavian and Gypsy traditional music, as well as a temperamental orchestra of wind instruments and percussion, have become Bregovic’s calling card. His music is a real cocktail of different cultures – here you can hear Bulgarian polyphony, Ortho

dox Church singing, Jewish and Arabic ornamentation, and many others folk music elements. Important too is Bregovic’s collaboration with such world famous performers as Iggy Pop, Ofra Haza, Cesaria Evora, The Gipsy Kings.
However, the festival will feature not only music. Hot summer days cannot be spent without temperament, hot rhythms and the emotions of flamenco dances.

Their bodies dart and their eyes flash, their arms weave and their feet tap out the fiery beat. In the last ten years the Madrid flamenco group Daminaro, with both dancers and musicians, has grown into a flamenco ensemble renowned in Spain. The program ‘Cae la Noche’ is Daminaro’s latest success. Through the figures of Greek mythology, they reveal the magic of the night, with sadness, passion, doom and death. They tell the story through poignantly delicate, full-blooded and sensually refined dance. This will be more than just a flamenco show: it will be a mythical story combining the unfathomable mystery of dance and myth.

The gala evening will be the biggest surprise of the festival Summertime. Artists from America, Russia, Holland, Austria and other countries will give a major two-part concert, featuring young talent from Latvia – winners of the Inese Galante talent competition.

Also joining the array of stars in Gala Galante will be the exciting saxophonist Henk van Twillert, whose saxophone has been compared in sensuality with the human voice, as well as the winners of several international competitions, pianist Arturs Cingujevs and cellist Maksims Beitans, and Galante’s long-term stage partners Intars Busulis, Raimonds Ozols, Aleksandrs Antonenko and Sergejs Jegers.

In the course of the evening you will experience a series of surprises, in the finest tradition of the festival, and enjoy the exciting, jubilant finale to the festival Summertime – Inese Galante and Friends in Jurmala, guaranteed by outstanding artists and by the inimitable Galante herself.

Summertime Festival
Aug. 11 – 17
More information and tickets available at: www.bilesuparadize.lv