Budapest’s jam-packed cultural October

With a jam-packed program of more than 60 events, organizers of the Budapest Autumn Festival have every right to say that this ten-day-long event that started eighteen years ago in the Hungarian capital has become one of Europe’s leading festivals of the contemporary arts. Running from 9 to 18 of October 2009, this edition features striking concerts and recitals, top quality performances of dance and theatre, screenings of films and video art and interesting art exhibitions.
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A Czech brick in the Wall

A group of Czech musicians, all excellent players and respected in their own right, come together to present what is probably the most ambitious and demanding project in Prague’s musical scene this year. The Wall 2009 is a unique concert that takes place at the O2 Arena on October 31, to recreate as a full scale show Pink Floyd's historical double album The Wall, which was released 30 years ago. This mega concert also coincides with the 20th anniversary of Prague’s Velvet Revolution, which highlighted the end of European Communism, and of course the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Sofia Dance Week: move your mind

The Sofia Dance Week is the first serious effort to establish a modern dance festival in Bulgaria as a permanent institution. Last year’s first edition of the dance festival was a huge success and brought to Sofia for the first time seven of the best European dance companies and choreographers, attracting a crowd of 10,000 that filled the streets and parks of the city. This second edition, from September 24 to October 1, 2009, is more promising.
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Olga Balakleets: art and business combined

Crisp, white linen table cloths, shining silver cutlery, tall stemmed wine glasses look elegant on decorated tables in the surrounds of the Presidential Palace gardens in Nicosia, where once again this year, the Cyprus-Russia Charity Gala takes place on September 11 under the auspices of Cyprus’ First Lady Elsie Christophias. The brainchild behind the event is Olga Balakleets, director of Ensemble Productions. OnCulture’s Saskia Constantinou met Olga in Nicosia…
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Evis Sammoutis: thriving on challenges

What do Stockhausen, Berio, Ligeti, Varese, Xenakis have in common? They are just some of the 38 composers whose works are part of the Pharos Arts Foundation’s First International Contemporary Music Festival. The five consecutive concerts take place at the Shoe Factory. The modern venue, its high walls adorned with striking contemporary art and lots of chrome and glass, creates the ideal, intimate atmosphere for contemporary music. This was reiterated by one of the artistic directors, the internationally respected Cypriot composer, Evis Sammoutis.
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The Marimekko revolution

What do Jacqueline Kennedy and Carrie Bradshaw have in common? The answer is Marimekko! The famous Finish design company’s remarkable history from its early years through the height of its international success during the 1960s and mid-1970s and up to today is examined in a unique exhibition, titled Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture, which takes place at the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana until October 18.
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Bucharest pumps up the volume

One thing is for sure: Bucharest does not know what it feels like to be in a post-summer blues mood, as far as live music is concerned. With Madonna’s super concert signaling the end of the summer in late August, some thought that the party’s over. They were so wrong. From September to the end of the year there are dozens of live concerts spread all over the Romanian capital. We chose the best 16 and present them to you.
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Dancing with the Dutch

The Nederlands Dans Theater has been a cultural ambassador of the Dutch since 1959, when it was founded. Giving sold-out performances all around the world, this is one of the leading dance companies worldwide. If you go to the Netherlands any time after November 2009 and until the end of May 2010, do not miss the opportunity to go to one of he NDT shows given in 24 cities around the country. But even if you cannot make it to the Dutch country, you might be lucky: the NDT may come to you! This season's European tour for the NDT runs until July 2010 and stops to France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg and Norway.
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Major Escher show comes to a close in Athens

A landmark exhibition on one of 20th century’s greatest artists, Maurits Cornelis Escher, comes to a close in Athens, Greece, with its fourth and final phase being on display at the Herakleidon Museum until November 15, 2009. This part of the exhibition From Drawing to Masterpiece highlights the way M.C. Escher used color in his work and is an absolute must-see especially if you have already seen the previous three phases.
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Victorian fashion cult in Riga

An authentic collection of women's and men's clothing of the Victorian times (1837-1901) is on display, for the first time ever in Latvia, at Riga’s Museum of Decorative Arts and Design until October 11, 2009. The display comprises about 50 garments and numerous accessories from England, France, Italy, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is representative of different styles, beginning with Romanticism up to Art Nouveau. It is part of the Paris-based vast collection of Russian-born stage and costume designer Alexandre Vassiliev.
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Whose Hamlet is this?

When it premiered last year in Stavanger, Norway, it made a sensation all over Europe. After making its trip around Europe’s most acclaimed theatre festivals, finally Oskaras Koršunovas’ Hamlet comes back home to go onstage for six shows only from September 4 to December 30, at the Teatro Arena of the Lithuanian capital. If you are in Vilnius when it performs, try not to miss the opportunity to see one of the most discussed Shakespeare interpretations of the decade.
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Europe goes… P!nk!

Being halfway through her fourth concert tour around the world P!nk has been tirelessly giving mesmerizing shows in sold out arenas and stadiums. Her Funhouse Tour in support of her fifth studio album, Funhouse, kicked off last February from France. Ten weeks and 41 concerts later, P!nk had appeared in 31 cities in nine countries in Europe. In mid-October P!nk is coming back to Europe for a final round of another 40 gigs in 29 cities in Ireland, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
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Concerts for all in Athens

Springtime and the following winter is going to be anything but boring in Athens. With so many live concerts scheduled all around the city, there’s no excuse for not going out. We looked through many lists of dozens of international names coming to the Greek capital right after summer, from early September until just before Christmas and we ended up with a shortlist of 16 live gigs that you should try not to miss. Enjoy…
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Final 2009 shows in Estonia’s art shrine

There’s one word in Estonia that makes the people of this small country feel proud: Kumu! An abbreviation of KunstuMuseum, meaning Art Museum, Kumu is the largest art museum in the Baltics and one of the largest in Northern Europe, housing today the seat of the Estonian Art Museum. This is good enough reason to take a look at the temporary shows it presents before the end of the 2009 exhibition program. From September until the beginning of 2010, Kumu hosts eight interesting exhibitions, which we present to you as suggestions if your next destination is Tallinn.
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Cyprus welcomes top dancers

Cyprus has taken contemporary dance seriously and this is good news for the lovers of the genre, who are nothing but few. A new audience has emerged for this kind of shows and this was obvious last June during the three weeks of the European Dance Festival. This September, dancers and choreographers from some of the crème de la crème of European dance companies are packing suitcases to be in Cyprus for the DanceCyprus Gala, kicking off on September 12 in Nicosia to wrap up the following day in Limassol.
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Edinburgh buzzes with hordes of artists

As Edinburgh buzzes with the hordes of actors, comedians and musicians who overwhelm the city for the annual Edinburgh Art Festival and Fringe, the traditionally vibrant visual art side of the Scottish capital might easily be overlooked. But for the sixth year of the Edinburgh Art Festival organisers have announced an impressive programme to build upon the reputation it has steadily developed since 2004.
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Vienna’s art in a nutshell

A short visit to Vienna these days is not the easiest thing if you really love the arts and are a devoted museum-goer. There’s so much on offer you will surely feel puzzled in this wonderful city. You see, Vienna has over 100 museums, major collections of global calibre as well as bizarre little ones and there’s no time to visit them all. Besides, there are problems as lack of information or too much of it that make the selection even more tricky. OnCulture went through some of the city’s hottest museums, saw what’s on and presents a shortlist of 76 shows you should not miss from Fall 2009 until the end of 2010, or even through 2011.
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Händel and Haydn remembered

Exactly 250 ago German composer George Frideric Händel died at the age of 74 in London. Fifty years later Austrian composer Joseph Haydn was dying in Vienna at the age of 77. To commemorate these two anniversaries, the Budapest Baroque Festival is dedicating its fourth edition to the two great composers with fourteen evening concerts at Budapest’s St. Michael’s Church, from September 17 to September 11.
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Red Dragon roars in Europe

With 45 major art exhibitions and more than 60 concerts from traditional to modern music, and 75 performances of theatre, opera, dance, puppets and acrobatics onstage in 40 cities in Belgium (but also in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg), europalia.china is definitely the biggest festival held in Europe to date. The festival runs over a period of more than 17 weeks -October 8, 2009, to February 14, 2010- but it is actually an eight-month marathon, since its events start as early as mid-September and some exhibitions run until the end of April 2010. Plenty of time for more than a million Europeans to get to know China’s millennia-old culture and traditions.
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Sofia's last 2009 live gigs

Sofia is a hot spot when it comes to live concerts. And it seems that Bulgarian concert-goers are always thirsty for new gigs since most of the lives scheduled for this season get sold-out within days of the pre-selling opening. Already half way through the second half of the year, Sofia lives in the Madonna mode. But after the great diva’s concert on August 29, gigs by famous artists continue. Some of them are Macy Gray, Mr Big, Cesaria Evora. Tarje Turunen, ZZ Top, Sylvie Vartan, Ojos de Brujo and what’s left of the legendary Boney M.
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What’s behind that mask?

Masks have always fascinated people since the dawn of time. From ancient cultures in the West through Japanese civilizations to the so-called “primitive” peoples, masks have formed an integral part of the human range of cultural expression at some time or other. 130 of these works of art by such different masters as Carpeaux, Rodin, Gauguin or Picasso, as well as many other artists from the 19th and early 20th centuries are exhibited at Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket in Copenhagen until November 1, 2009.
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Romanian Theatre celebration

The crème de la crème of the productions in the last Romanian theatre season’s can be seen in a packed ten-day explosive festival in Bucharest that has been followed by theatregoers for 19 consecutive years. The 2009 edition of the Romanian National Theatre Festival takes place from October 31 to November 9, with performances by companies all over the countries given in several leading theatres of the Romanian capital.
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A Dutch cultural extravaganza

An avalanche of over 27 top quality art exhibitions in ten of Holland’s best museums in four cities, within a period of 32 months (November 2008 to June 2011) is what the Dutch masterminded in order to take the European art-loving crowds by storm once again. The ongoing art explosion of world-class cultural offerings has a name: Holland Art Cities is a carefully planned project that coordinates dozens of museums, institutions, public and private organization in an effort to promote The Netherlands as Europe’s cultural hub.
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Polynesian mysteries explained in Chile

Far away, isolated from the rest of the world, floating in the middle of an endless Ocean, little islands with exotic names excite our imagination and the senses. An exhibition in Santiago, Chile, is shedding some light on one of them, the most enigmatic. The Kuhane Rapa Nui, in the islands of the Pacific exhibition focuses on the Easter Island –a Chilean possession in Polynesia- and sees it as an inseparable part of the cultural family of Oceania. You can visit it at the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda until September 27, 2009.
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A Dazzling 400th Birthday for the Big Apple

Exactly 400 years ago Henry Hudson left the Dutch shores and set sail for America, where he founded New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. To celebrate this anniversary, the Netherlands and the City of New York organize a series of events that run throughout 2009 and half way into 2010 both in Amsterdam and in New York. The events in the Big Apple culminate with the NY400 Week, September 8-13, marked by the official visit of the Prince of Orange and Princess Máxima of the Netherlands. Let’s see what’s in the dazzling program of events for New York’s 400th birthday.
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Candles light in Birgu again

A three-day event out of the ordinary expects those who will be in Malta in the weekend of October 9-11. Across the Grand Harbour from the capital city of Valletta, lies the beautiful quaint harbour town of Birgu or Vittoriosa, which celebrates a unique festival with lots of interesting twists. One of the highlights is the Birgu by Candle Light, when the streets and narrow lanes of Birgu are deprived of their normal electricity lights to be lit instead by thousands of candles. It is a night to remember when Birgu is literally seen under a different light and appreciated even more for its historical heritage.
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Survivor’s guide to Barcelona’s art

What do Roman ruins, Gothic plazas, Art Nouveau and artistic luminaries like Antonio Gaudí, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies have in common? The answer is that they are all defining elements of Barcelona’s life that permeate the city’s cultural scene. Barcelona’s reputation as a world centre for art, architecture and design is growing every year. With a plethora of cultural activities on offer, the perennial problem in the Catalonian capital is not finding things to do, but finding the time to do them all!
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Swedish opera nights

With a history of more than two centuries, the Kungliga Operan or Royal Opera is the national stage for opera in Sweden. This opera season you have twenty one reasons to go to the opera in Stockholm from August 22, 2009, to June 19, 2010: twelve operas, eight ballets and one concert of the Royal Court Orchestra!
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Warsaw Film Fest’s jubilee year

Already in its 25th year, the Warsaw Film Festival is the country’s best and most in demand international celebration of world cinema featuring hundreds of films from Poland and overseas over a week-long screening marathon. This year, the 25th edition runs from 9 to 18 of October 2009 and screens movies in four cinema theatres (Multikino Złote Tarasy, Kinoteka, and, after a break of some years, Kultura and Rejs) in the centre of the Polish capital.
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Las Vegas nights in Helsinki

You might or you might not like this kind of entertainment but you should at least try it. Treat yourself with a journey back in time into the roots of casino entertainment in the exciting Las Vegas glam of the happy 50s and 60s. It is easy if you are in Helsinki, Finland, from September until the end of December. If blackjack and the roulette is not your style, you can still dress up and go to the glamorous Grand Casino Helsinki to see one of the three shows onstage this season. And of course you can combine them with a delicious dinner.
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Five-week art celebration at the Pompidou

Five weeks of exhibitions, shows, conferences, screenings, living paintings, concerts and performances punctuate the programme of a new festival organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris from October 21 until November 23, 2009. The Pompidou is inviting a wide-ranging audience to discover today’s creation in all its shapes and colours in this continuous laboratory of contemporary art. Join the festivities in Paris and take the privileged opportunity to renew your perception of creation and contemporary issues.
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Remember this name: Perpetuum Jazzile

Remember this name: Perpetuum Jazzile. If you do not know them yet, then you are obviously not one of their 4.5 million viewers on YouTube. This Slovenian vocal ensemble comes to the international scene literally out of the blue and is determined to take the world. Try to make it to their Ljubljana long expected Vokal Xtravaganzza show in November 1-3 and this will be a moment to remember. They appear onstage at Cankarjev dom’s Gallus Hall together with one of the leading a capella groups in the world, The Real Group from Sweden, and tickets are selling out fast.
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Music as a Mirror of Culture

After its successful presentation in Prague last year, the Muzika Etnika: Music as a Mirror of Culture exhibition made its way to neighbouring Slovakia, where it has been on show since late July at the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava. By presenting seven instruments or groups of instruments from seven cultural regions on four continents, the exhibition shows that music is formed by the same set of rules as an entire mother culture. You can visit Muzika Etnika until October 10, 2009.
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Green ideas to design the future

For one month, Riga becomes host to an international crowd of young talented people who create imaginative and eco-friendly design projects. The second edition of Design.Future, the International Young Designers Biennial in the Latvian capital, runs from October 15 until November 16, 2009 and includes design exhibitions, creative workshops and seminars focusing on eco-thinking, which involves the production, use, lifetime and recycling of a product.
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Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism

After its great success at the Tate Modern in London, with more than 100 thousand visitors from February to May 2009, the exhibition Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism was transferred to Greece last June to be presented by the Greek State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) at the Moni Lazariston exhibition hall. If you couldn’t see it while in London, you still have time until September 20, to witness what the British press hailed as the show of the work of two avant-garde Russians who paved the way for Warhol.
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Kypria cultural extravaganza

A cultural extravaganza staged at ten venues across the island, the Kypria International Festival brings to Cyprus some of the world's best artists in the fields of music, dance and performing arts. The premier cultural event of the year, the festival has been running since 1990 and each new edition is eagerly awaited. This year, from September 1 to October 4, prepare yourselves for an excellent line-up in eleven top events, which include Aida Gomez’s Carmen ballet, Dulce Pontes’ Fados and Umoja’s South African spirit…
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Small is beautiful

With some 1,500 works by 536 artists from 66 countries, the Sofia-based Lessedra Gallery has every right to claim that its 8th World Mini Print exhibition is one of the biggest of its kind. The annual summer event has been running in the Bulgarian capital since June 3, attracting hundreds of printmaking fans from across the country. You can visit the show until the end of August to enjoy imaginary works in small dimensions by artists from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.
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Dreams built on the sand

Twenty-four sand sculptors from 14 different nations compete for the title of the world's best sand artist in the International Sandsculpture Festival that takes place in the small charming town of Søndervig, near Ringkøbing, in Denmark’s western coast. You are all welcome to step into a wonderful world where adults are allowed to be like children again, while art and adventure go hand in hand. Visit the world of fantastic sand sculptures until October 26, 2009.
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Remembering the Baltic Way

A small photography exhibition at the first floor lobby of the Latvian Foreign Ministry in Riga, awakens memories that have left a deep mark in the Baltic people’s hearts and minds and have shaped their fate. The Baltic Way that Moved the World tells the story of millions of men, women and children who held hands twenty years ago and joined three nations together in a peaceful protest against a powerful empire. That 600 km human chain was an unprecedented demonstration of their will to be free. Twenty years later, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are remembering and reminding the world with a series of events that run until November.
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Soldiers in show biz

There seems to be a special audience for military bands and activities in Malta that draws from the country’s British domination times. One of the most popular annual events with sold out shows is the Malta Military Tattoo, which takes place for the sixth year on Saturday and Sunday October 10-11 at the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre, in Ta’Qali. The event provides an atmosphere of precision marching, formation, gymnastic displays and music, which many find entertaining. But, what is a military tattoo?
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Dalí Dalí feat. Francesco Vezzoli

It has been 25 years since the works of Salvador Dalí were last presented in Stockholm. Now it is the right time to present one of the most important artists from the 20th century -again at the Moderna Museet- especially to a new generation that never had the possibility to see his works in real. In the Dalí Dalí featuring Francesco Vezzoli exhibition (September 19, 2009-January 17, 2010), contemporary Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli is invited to add co-curatorial input as well as an artistic intervention in the display.
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Surrealism and Beyond

Helsinki is not a stronghold of surrealist art. And this is what makes exciting a visit to the exhibition Surrealism and Beyond - Masterpieces from the Israel Museum that is on display at the Tennis Palace Art Museum until September 22. The show is a rare selection of works by major surrealist names, including Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Jean (Hans) Arp, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch and Paul Delvaux, all coming from the Arturo Schwarz collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
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Anastacia’s hot European September

Always colourful Anastacia started her 2009 tour in style with a European trek through fifteen countries. The singer's road trip kicked off June 4 in Saint Petersburg, Russia and went for two months through Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Spain and Portugal. In September, the New York born superstar, will be hitting the road once again to present her new Heavy Rotation album with a fall European arena tour that will bring her onstage in Romania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Lithuania and Ukraine.
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Graphic Arts with a hi-tech touch

Over its fifty-year long history the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts has received tremendous acclaim from artists, experts and public alike and has become one of the world's biggest and most renowned events of the kind. This multifaceted event consists of a number of exhibitions as well as other happenings that attract the world’s best artists to the Slovene capital every second year. The flagship of this year’s 28th edition of the Biennial is the exhibition The Matrix: An Unstable Reality, on view in Ljubljana for two months from September 4 to October 25, 2009.
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Pixel Art weekend in Riga

It’s been nine years since the first Waterpieces festival was held in the Latvian capital, Riga. Back then it was a one-day event but as years passed the festival grew and now three days seem not to be enough to show all the video art works and performances lined-up. The Waterpieces International Contemporary Art and Video Festival celebrates its ninth edition at the Betanovuss former personnel ship at AB dambis alongside the Noass floating galley across the water from the Old Town of Riga, from 4 to 6 of September, but you can visit the exhibitions until October 4.
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Apollonia’s arts celebration in Sozopol

This is the 25th year that the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Sozopol in Thrace becomes host to many of the country’s talents at the annual Apollonia Festival of Arts 2009, which takes place from August 29 to September 6. The festival organized by the Apollonia Arts Foundation features a rich programme of events, which includes eight theatre plays, 27 concerts, 15 book presentations, two theatre readings, a poetry night, a political debate and cinema nights.
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Worshiping Women in Athens

The controversial position of women in ancient Greece is examined thoroughly in a not-to-be-missed exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, which celebrates 120th years since the inauguration of its main building in central Patission street and the 180 th anniversary of its establishment as the country’s principal museum for ancient art. Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens can be visited until November 30.
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Anim’est fun in Bucharest

More than 300 short and feature animation films, video-clips and commercial TV spots can be enjoyed during the Anim’est International Animation Festival that takes place in Bucharest for the fourth year, from 2 to 11 of October. This year’s edition has a series of treats for the animation aficionados, such as star–movies, which received awards in important festivals, animation films by Romanian students and special guests. What’s more important, a great deal of those films premiere in Romania.
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Design to win the Cold War

It seems incredible that the battle to win people's hearts and minds during the cold war that divided Europe and much of the rest of the world during the years following the Second World War could be symbolised by an American kitchen! The National Art Gallery of the Lithuanian Art Museum autumn exhibition Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70 explains how this was made possible as it examines contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era. You can visit it in Vilnius from October 2 to December 7, 2009.
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A Russian theatre week in Tallinn

Four of the best Russian theatre productions of the year go onstage this spring during the week-long Golden Mask Theatre Festival that presents its fifth edition from 6 to 13 of October in the Estonian capital Tallinn and the town of Jõhvi 50 km from the Russian border. The festival, which offers a variety of theatre genres, from drama to comedy and from musical to puppetry, is addressing mainly the Russian speaking audience, but all performances have Estonian surtitles.
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