Festival programme

Dear Festival guests,

This year we have changed the festival format so that instead of there being two or three separate concerts a day we offer a possibility of listening to two or more artists/ensembles during one concert. This will make enjoying the festival more convenient for the listener. More importantly, though, this will encourage more spontaneous and improvisational musical meetings, where artists from different lands and cultures can join in each others’ traditions and styles.

In this year's festival the musical bridges will be built by groups from all over Europe and Asia. Ensemble Mandragora from Switzerland, concentrating on late-Medieval and early Renaissance music for strong wind instruments, joins viola da gamba consort Väike rinG from Estonia in the program From Córdoba to St. Gall. Agnethe Christensen from Sweden andLeah Stuttard from England performing ancient Scandinavian ballads, and the Mohammad Rasouli Ensemble from Iran performing Persian Classical music will present a program called From Uppsala to Isfahan. The famous virtuoso of Chinese traditional flutes Hu Yulin and one of India’s foremost musicians in the genre of Hindustani classical music, the legendary Pt. Nayan Ghosh with his prodigy son Ishaan Ghosh, come together in the program From the Great Wall to the Taj Mahal. With a slightly different format we also have in the festival program a concert Resurrection of the Harp, which brings together excellent musicians playing instruments from different epochs, and highlights the only fully restored historical harp found in Estonia being presented byLilian Langsepp.

Wit improvisational meetings of musicians from different cultures becoming more and more common not just in jazz but also in folk music, the festival Orient et Occident brings together different cultures not only through a historical prism but also through historical repertoire. Surprisingly we have thus found far more commonality between seemingly unrelated cultures than we could have ever expected. Come and experience it yourselves!

Wishing an enjoyable and memorable festival experience,

Raho Langsepp

Artistic Director of the festival