Chichon’s mark in LNSO’s new season

There’s no doubt that the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra is one of the calling cards of this Baltic country. Over the past few years the LNSO has, as Latvians put it, “picked up its strength” as the artistic level of the orchestra keeps growing, along with the numbers of its listeners. In the 2009/10 concert season, running until May 14, 2010, the orchestra is in the care of an outstanding Artistic Director, Gibraltar-born British conductor Karel Mark Chichon, hailed as one of today’s most exciting young artists, a conductor of genius as the New York Times put it.
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Three-in-one at Riga’s kim?

The latest addition to Riga’s cultural map, the Latvian Contemporary Arts Museum kim? is pushing hard with a dynamic agenda in its virgin year. With two exhibitions -Guido van der Werve’s Everything is Going to Be Alright and Gints Gabrāns’ White Point- and one installation –Candyland’ Global Trash- running from November 7 until December 13, kim? presents its Climate thematic cycle and drops the question: what is art?/what is museum? (kas ir māksla?/kas ir muzejs? in Latvian).
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New York’s Met Opera in Riga

The New York Metropolitan Opera's experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form. The groundbreaking series of live, high-definition Saturday performance transmissions into movie theatres in more than 35 countries around the world has enjoyed box office success, reaching an estimated audience of more than 1.1 million viewers last year. In 2009-10, the Met offers its fourth season of international HD transmissions -this time with nine broadcasts. In Latvia, you can watch live Met’s thrilling, world-class opera at Riga’s Parex Plaza Cinema.
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WinterFest concerts in Riga

Every year since 1999, the Herman Braun Foundation in Latvia is organizing a series of concerts to celebrate preparations for the Winter season in November, Christmas in December, New Year and Russian Orthodox Christmas in January, and the regular anniversary of Foundation in February. The Winterfest held this year from November 14, 2009 to February 13, 2010, includes nine concerts of vocal, baroque, jazz and classical music that you should not miss.
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Exotic art from the Orient in Riga

If you are in Latvia you don’t have to go half the way around the globe to see ethnic applied art from faraway and exotic places like India, Indochina and Indonesia. Just around the corner, in the capital of Riga, you can always visit the Museum of Foreign Art where you can see its current exhibition From India to Indonesia running until the end of the year. The museum’s Oriental art collection is the only one in the country and the permanent exposition presents Chinese art from the 16th to the 20th century.
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Russia’s finest theatre goes to Riga

Four of the best Russian theatre productions of last year go onstage this spring during the Golden Mask Theatre Festival that runs from 4 to 15 of October in the Latvian capital Riga. The festival, which offers a variety of theatre genres, from drama to comedy and from opera to ballet theatre, is addressing mainly the Russian speaking audience, but all performances have Latvian surtitles. Performances are given at the Daile Theatre and the Latvian National Opera House.
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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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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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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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Private photo views

If you want to have a rather complete overview of the best of Latvian Photography, do visit the Latvian National Museum of Art’s Arsenāls Hall in Riga from August 20 until October 18 to see the exhibition Private, featuring works by seven prominent artists of all generations: Arnis Balčus, Gunārs Binde, Zenta Dzividzinska, Roman Korovin, Inta Ruka, Alnis Stakle, and Vilnis Vītoliņš, are all photographers whose work expressively shows the spirit of the times, both with the techniques they use and with the messages they sent.
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The Homo Novus experience

If this is not a good reason to go to Latvia this year, then what is it? Two weeks that guarantee plenty of emotion, happy encounters, surprises, questions raised, constructive talks and time spent in the company of some of the most wonderful artists in Europe and the world is a powerful reason to pack and go to Latvia from August 30 to September 12 to be part of the Homo Novus International Festival of Contemporary Theatre.
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How far can you see?

Twelve Finnish contemporary visual artists, each in their own way, reflect on the finiteness of human vision. Their variations in the form of photographs, video art and installations make up the exhibition presented at the Riga Art Space in the Latvian capital until August 23. The exhibition titled Variations on Transcending the Finiteness of Human Vision is produced by FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange) in collaboration with the Riga Art Space and the Riga Culture Agency.
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Young Sergei returns home

Everyone knows Sergei Eisenstein as one of the world’s greatest filmmakers of all times but very few outside his native country, know that he was actually from Latvia, born in Riga where he spent the first 17 years of his life. Celebrating the 110th birthday of that sacred monster of cinema history and marking twenty years since its foundation, the Riga Film Museum organizes a grand exhibition titled Riga boy Sergei Eisenstein. The exhibition, which focuses on Eisenstein’s childhood and adolescence in Riga, opens July 27 and runs through the end of the year.
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LNO prelude for the 2009/10 season in Riga

With an impressive programme of opera and ballet productions, the Latvian National Opera kicks off the 2009/10 season, which includes some 32 productions for the months of October, November and December. The rest of the 10 season has not been announced yet, so stay tuned. The season opens in Riga on October 2 with a grand concert for the Latvijas Gāze Annual Award Ceremony, which will be conducted by Normunds Vaicis and Farhads Stade. And there’s more… Six operas and eleven ballet shows are on offer just before the twist of the year.
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