A different festival week
Selma Bolstad and Ibou Cissokho play PIKNIK concert under the tent at Festplassen on Saturday, July 4. Only 100 tickets - buy at TicketCo.no. Photo: Marcus Tveit Karkash
The year the world will not come to an end Førde
Førdefestivalen has cancelled this year's festival, and the entire planned program has been postponed until next year. The festival is still planning to create a bit of a festival atmosphere during the days the festival was supposed to take place, July 1-5. -For almost a year, we have had the festival in week 27 as the big goal. Now we should have actually wanted artists from all over the world, volunteers from near and far, audiences of all ages and guests from the cultural and business world to welcome us to five days of hectic festival activity, says director of Førdefestivalen , Per Idar Almås. Instead, there will be four days of pop-up concerts, a picnic concert in the park and concerts at senior centers in the municipality.
Picnic concert with Norwegian-Senegalese duo
At Festplassen, the beautiful tent roof will be put back in place this week and the space under the roof will be the arena for the only ticketed concert the festival will arrange in July: a picnic concert with Norwegian Selma Bolstad and Ibou Cissokho from Senegal. -In this duo, the Hardanger fiddle meets the kora, the West African harp. It is traditions from Valdres and Senegal that merge into new expressions when the voices of Bolstad and Cissokho meet the strings of their instruments, says Almås. The concert is corona-adapted, and only has room for 100 people, who in return are allowed to sit at small tables - and are welcome to bring food and drinks. -We haven't had a picnic concert before at the festival, adds Almås, but if it is a success, it can happen again.
Ibou Cissokho and Solo Diarra pop up with concerts from Førde its own cultural hangar on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd July - all around the Førde . Stay tuned!
Pop-up concerts with West African rhythms
The festival will be held on Thursday and Friday. Førde their own cultural trailer, and is bringing the duo Ibou & Solo; Ibou Cissokho and Solo Diarra, on a mini-tour. The two musicians come from Senegal and Burkina Faso respectively, but are based in Oslo. -There will be three concerts on Thursday and three on Friday. The trailer with West African rhythms will stop at a hospital, a shopping mall, a museum, a kindergarten, a housing association and a square. The time has not been announced, but if you see festival banners, pennants or other festival material when you are out and about, it is a sign that something is going to happen there, explains the director. -The trailer concerts are free concerts, and in addition to these and the concert in the park, four of the care centers in the municipality will have concerts with the Indre Sunnfjord Spelemanslag on Wednesday evening.
The Inner Sunnfjord Fiddlers' Association will play concerts at four of the care centers in Sunnfjord municipality on Wednesday, July 1st.
Utvidar with festival weekend in October
Førdefestivalen also has a year-round concert program, and after the cancellation of the festival, the staff has spent the time programming a festival weekend from October 23rd to 25th. -We want to offer live music to the audience, and now we are using this special year to create a two-day program with 2-3 artists each day. The program for the weekend will be launched late in the summer, says Almås. The concerts will take place at Larris Scene, in addition to a concert in Førde church.