VILNIUS FESTIVAL 2003
7th festival
9–30 June, 2003

For the seventh year in a row, this June the Lithuanian capital again resounds with the music of the Vilnius Festival.

As a member of the European Festivals Association (EFA), the Vilnius Festival’s priority is to organise joint projects featuring Lithuanian and European musicians, and to observe consistently the best European traditions in the performance and management of music.

Vidmantas Bartulis’ oratorio, commissioned by this year’s festival, is included in the joint project of five European festivals “Sounds of the Spirit”, financed by the EU Culture 2000 programme.

A significant part of the festival this year will be devoted to orchestral music. We will be treated to performances by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the early music ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, which is visiting Lithuania for the first time, and Kremerata Baltica, which is already well known here. The Vilnius Festival will introduce a new Lithuanian orchestra, the Vilnius Festival Orchestra, led and conducted by the greatest viola player in the world, Yuri Bashmet.

The distinguished Lithuanian harpsichordist, a professor at the Prague Conservatoire, Giedrė Lukšaitė-Mrázková, and the Vilnius String Quartet, will enrich a pléiad of Lithuanian musicians performing at the festival. The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of the maestro Juozas Domarkas, will share the stage with the soloists Gidon Kremer and Ūla Ulijona Žebriūnaitė.

As every year, the festival will present some jazz concerts. We will have an unprecedented opportunity to hear the charismatic Cuban flautist Orlando “Maraca” Valle, and his band Maraca’s Otra Vision, and the legendary guitar player Al Di Meola and his friends.

Three concerts will feature music by the foremost Polish composer, who is celebrating his 70th birthday this year, Krzysztof Penderecki.

Participants and guests of the festival, I wish you all wondrous moments, the inexhaustible joy of music-making, and many memorable experiences in the city of Vilnius and its Festival!

Gintautas Kėvišas,
Director of the Vilnius Festival