The warm-up for this year’s Porto Etno festival begins this August with a unique musical medley of indigenous and modern sounds at no less than three locations forming a part of the 27 Neighbourhoods flagship of Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture, a project aimed at developing good interpersonal relations and creating an atmosphere of enjoying diversity. Entrance to all events is free.
This year, the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture (ECoC) project brings you another exciting edition of the World Music and Gastro Festival – Porto Etno!
Porto Etno will take place in Rijeka from 6 through 8 September 2019 at three different locations: In the Rijeka Resolution Square/128 Brigade HV Square, the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc and the City market, the festival will welcome more than 100 musicians, such as the Boban Marković Orkestar, BaBa ZuLa, Acid Arab and Iva Bittova. Visitors will also be able to taste food from as many as 20 world cuisines, prepared by associations of national minorities of Rijeka and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, as well as inhabitants of Rijeka, originating from all over the world, including the Philippines, India, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Italy, the Czech Republic and many others.
The warm-up for this year’s Porto Etno festival begins this August with a unique musical medley of indigenous and modern sounds at no less than three locations forming a part of the 27 Neighbourhoods flagship of Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture, a project aimed at developing good interpersonal relations and creating an atmosphere of enjoying diversity. Entrance to all the events is free.
The first event will take place on 16 and 17 August in the Gomirje Neighbourhood of the Rijeka 2020 ECoC, where a two-day pilot-programme, i.e. an emerging festival called “Gomirje Accordion Mundial” will be held. It will be organised in cooperation with the “Gomirje at Heart 1599” Association. On the opening day of the festival, Friday, 16 August at 6 pm, in the beautiful courtyard of the Monastery and Church of St. John the Forerunner, which is the westernmost Orthodox monastery in Europe, visitors will be able to enjoy a performance by the internationally acclaimed, multiple-award-winning accordionist Ante Mamula, who will play the “Accordion Recital”. The programme will resume on Saturday, 17 August at the House of Culture in Gomirje where an accordion masterclass will be held from 3 pm through 6 pm by the notable soloist, educator and composer Aleksander Ipavec. Applications for participation will be accepted through 10 August, at the following e-mail address: nikolina.kosanovic@gmail.com, which is also the e-mail where any additional information relating to the masterclass may be obtained. Limited seats available.
Also on Saturday, August 17, starting at 8 pm, Ipavec will perform together with the participants of the masterclass and the Porto Etno Orchestra, which was put together for the purpose of the Porto Etno Festival of Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture. It comprises musicians from Rijeka, Istria and Kvarner whose names (and music) may sound familiar even to those uninitiated in ethnic and jazz music. Members include Zoran Majstorović (Arabic oud, saz, mandolin, ukulele, electric guitar, band leader), Branimir Gazdik (drums), Bojan Skočilić (double bass, electric bass guitar), Dorian Cuculić (piano, keyboards), Zvonimir Radišić (electric and acoustic guitar), Robert Mikuljan (trumpet, bugle) and Luka Vrbanec (alt and tenor saxophone).
The warm-up for this year’s Porto Etno continues in the Čavle Neighbourhood of Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture (ECoC) with an event dubbed the Bell-ringer’s Symphony! The event will take place on Friday, 23 August in the Croatian Homeland War Veterans’ Square in Čavle, starting at 8:30 pm. This is a unique musical medley of drummers and bell-ringers that will be jointly performed by the Karlovac Drummers and the Grobnik Bell-ringers (Grobnički Dondolaši). All these sounds will be conducted by maestro Zoran Majstorović, and organised by TB Čavle, the Palentar Association, the Grobnik Bell-ringers, and the municipality of Čavle.
The last warm-up event for the Porto Etno festival within the Rijeka 2020 ECoC project, happening on Saturday, 24 August, will be the Porto Etno warm-up in Vrbnik on the island of Krk. Vrbenski sopci (long flute players from Vrbnik) whose long flute tunes have already conquered concert venues in Brussels, Strasbourg and Galway, will this time be performing before local audiences in the Škujica Square starting at 9 pm. It will be a musical evening fostering good-neighbourly relations through an unusual blend of ecology and music. Besides Vrbenski sopci, visitors will also be able to enjoy the performance of the attendees of a musical workshop led by Ana Jagić Aljić, a music pedagogue. They will be playing ethno music on musical instruments built from recyclable materials, while sopci and sopčići (a local dialect name for young and adult instrumentalists), Marko Žele’s electro-rock fusion band (from the Lovran Neighbourhood), and the Vrbenske Kanturice female choir will jointly go all out to try and woo the audience with a mellifluous medley of traditional Mediterranean sounds. The event will be organised by: The KUD Frankopan Cultural and Artistic Association, TB Vrbnik, Vrbnik branch school, and the Interval Association from Lovran.
The three events making up the Preliminary Programme of the Porto Etno festival are a blend of the 27 Neighbourhoods and the Kitchen of Diversity flagships of the Rijeka 2020 – ECoC project.
“Kitchen of Diversity” is focused on migrations and minorities, unusual music combinations, cookery, art and activism. It is open for the exchange of ideas, habits and for discussing existing prejudices, and it is also thematically focused on minorities and includes and celebrates various minority cultures and subcultures: national, ethnic, religious, gender, minorities according to physical or mental diversity, age and lifestyle. Everyone is invited to the “Kitchen of Diversity”. “Kitchen of Diversity” creates room for everyone.
The “27 Neighbourhoods” flagship gathers together neighbourhoods throughout Primorje and Gorski Kotar County and connects each of them with one neighbourhood in one of the member states of the EU. The “27 Neighbourhoods” flagship connects people from the islands, the coast, the outback, the highlands and the city of Rijeka. These are: Lovran, Opatija, Matulji, Kastav, Pehlin, Drenova, Škurinje, Turnić and Mlaka, Student Campus in Trsat, Jelenje, Čavle, Praputnjak, Kostrena, Crikvenica, Novi Vinodolski, the island of Rab, Unije, the city of Cres, the island of Krk, Malinska, Vrbnik, Gomirje, Mrkopalj, Fužine, Delnice, Brod na Kupi and Gornji Kuti. Our neighbours achieve international cooperation with 27 European neighbourhoods. This flagship provides multiple opportunities for an exchange that extends across Europe, thus creating an informal network of cultural activities that will last beyond 2020.
