Japan’s World Music and Dance Festival
“Every August, for 30,000 people, Worlds Meet in Japan” By Prof. Ian Frank. 
It wasn’t planned this way. In 2003, I was living in the north of Japan and practicing drumming with a local group. They wanted to celebrate their fifth anniversary with a concert, and in front of my workplace is a huge lawn, so I said “Let’s do it!” By gradually expanding from local to national to overseas groups, what started as an enjoyable day out for us and some friends has now turned into an annual five-day international event that passed 30,000 audience for the first time this year. We benefited from stumbling onto the gap in Japan’s events ecology: although the country is brimming with festivals, there were no others that focused on inviting groups from overseas. Because we weren’t really expecting this success, we have the rather unimaginative name of “World Music and Dance Festival”, with its abbreviation WMDF (see http://wmdf.org/en). “Think big big big at the beginning” is just one of the lessons that we learned the hard way. We did better this year when naming our new festival that we co-located with WMDF: the “Mogu Mogu” festival fills the park we are based in with stalls selling goods and gourmet from around the world (“mogu mogu” is a Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of eating). Continue Reading
The 10th Asia-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival – Taiwan
The 10th edition of Asia-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival will take place from October 1 to 10, 2011 at the National Center for Traditional Arts, a 24-hectare cultural complex located in I-Lan County, Taiwan. The Festival is presented by the National Center for Traditional Arts with sponsorship of the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA). About 120 traditional arts groups from 23 Asian Pacific countries had been invited to the Festival over the past years.
5 Jahre syrisch-österreichische Musikkooperation – Johanna Doderer präsentiert Kompositionen
Ein fulminantes Konzert in der Oper von Damaskus markierte am 23. März den Höhepunkt der bereits seit 5 Jahren bestehenden österreichisch-syrischen Musikkooperation zur Förderung junger Musik- und Kompositionstalente. Das Konzert wurde in einem intensiven zweiwöchigen Workshop vorbereitet. Der Chefdirigent des Syrischen Symphonieorchesters, Missak Baghboudarian, erarbeitete in Zusammenarbeit mit dem österreichischen Dirigenten Ewald Donhoffer mit dem Orchester der Musikhochschule Damaskus ein abwechslungsreiches Programm. Continue Reading
Zum 200 Geburtstag – Franz Liszt
Im Rahmen des Liszt-Schwerpunktes des Kulturforums in Budapest wurde am 18. März die Ausstellung “Vivat Liszt! Hör das Licht…sieh den Klang – Tour d‘Europe„ in der Budapest Galerie eröffnet. Die in Kooperation mit dem Kulturforum veranstaltete Ausstellung entstand auf Initiative von eu-art-network, das ein Symposium im August 2010 in der Cselley – Mühle in Oslip (Burgenland) organisierte, an dem zahlreiche Künstler aus Europäischen Städten, in denen Liszt wirkte, teilnahmen. Continue Reading
Serbian town offers stop over to performing groups
To all those music, folklore, dance or theater groups that will pass through Serbia on their way to other festivals, have great opportunity for one night/ one concert stop-over opportunity. The Municipality of Bojcin, small town near Belgrade has festival of Cultural Summer of Bojcin, where we can suggest some interesting programs and performers. Continue Reading