folkBALTICA Festival, 9-13 April, Flensburg, Germany
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The 4th folkBALTICA Festival, hosted by Flensburg and the German-Danish region of Sønderjylland-Schleswig, showcases the music culture of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, with over 100 artists appearing on 24 stages.
Advance sales start on 22 February from all CTS ticket offices In Germany.
After Norway, Sweden and Finland, the 2008 festival will be focusing on Estonia, the smallest of the three Baltic States, which celebrates its 90th anniversary as a republic next year. “In the last few years Estonian society has changed at an astonishing pace. Estonia is a modern country with an tremendously exciting, but largely unknown, music culture that will certainly provide a few surprises,” says the festival’s artistic director, Jens-Peter Müller, explaining the choice.
The Estonian music scene is known for being extremely keen on experimentation based on a rich folk music tradition. Over the last ten years the Estonian bagpipes (Torupilli) have been experiencing a revival, interestingly enough, it is mainly young women who play them. At folkBALTICA the two excellent bagpipe players from the group Ro:toro are joined by an improvising saxophonist and a mad percussionist who plays plastic bowls on a waterbed.
folkBALTICA will also see a co-operation with electric guitarist Karl Laanekask, who has been collecting the songs of the Khant (speakers of the Finno-Ugric language Khanty) in a very remote part of Russia. At the ”Night of the Brass” in the “Alte Post” festival centre on Saturday 12th April Ro:toro will be meeting Cologne’s Schäl Sick Brass Band with Swedish singer Anna Lindblom. Estonia’s legendary formation The Johansons will be making their Germany debut at folkBALTICA. With the title “Estonian Springtime”, two church concerts are dedicated to contemporary choral music by Veljo Tormis, the best known Estonian composer besides Arvo Pärt, and the great vocal tradition in the “Land of Singers” with folk-jazz group Elletuse with Estonia’s most popular singer Liisi Koikson.
A highlight of this year’s folkBALTICA will be the anniversary concert “10 Years of Haugaard & Høirup” with its top-class lineup on Sunday 13th April, which includes Groupa flautist Jonas Simonson, Norway’s top violinists Ragnhild Furebotten and Gjermund Larsen (from the groups Majorstuen and Frigg) and double bass player Tapani Varis and the young Finnish singer Aili Järvelä.
The “Bass Night on Museum Hill“ with Rasmus Krøyer, clarinettist with the Danish band Afenginn, with Ara Yaralyan, bassist with the Estonian band Elletuse, and the two great pillars of the Schäl Sick Brass Band, Annette Maye and Joachim Gellert promises to be another exciting “special”.
Denmark’s hot ethno band Instinkt, the Swedish-South African group Gruppe Fjarill from Hamburg, Poland’s young Dautenis quintet, and Germany’s oldest folk band Schmelztiegel from Kiel will be rounding off this unique programme for fans of Nordic music.
In addition to the concerts, films, exhibitions, literary readings, and workshops at the university and the music schools will give insights into the culture of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea.
In 2008 folkBALTICA is commissioning a work for the very first time!
The centuries-old German-Baltic cultural history, which is also echoed in amazingly similar instrumental pieces and folk songs, is the starting point for a joint project between North German group Malbrook and the Estonian formation Ro:toro. The first performance of this work will be at the Viljandi Folk Festival from 25th – 27th July 2008.
Find more information and listen to the Festival's soaundmap on this website.