Smolna Comes Alive
This weekend (Sept. 26 and 27), Warsaw will witness another Smolna Festival, an event organised by the Smolna Street Association with a little help from the city. This exceptional festival was invented three years ago by several neighbours who wanted to revive the pre-war city lifestyle of the street, which consisted in the local communities being highly integrated, strengthening their “little homelands”. Soon, it appeared there are dedicated photographers, musicians, historians, and many other gifted people living at two of the Smolna pre-war houses (no. 14 and 16). Consequently, they began meeting up and organising their own concerts, photo exhibitions, etc., an activity Warsaw had never seen before.
This year’s festival directly touches upon the concept of combining the arts into a complex cultural event and is therefore named Synteza Sztuk (A Synthesis of the Arts). The festival is an interdisciplinary project that offers not only classical and contemporary music concerts, but also photography exhibitions and workshops.
The programme includes:
26th of September (Saturday)
Panufnik Trio (piano, violin and cello) will play at 7 pm in the local House of Culture (Dom Kultury Śródmieście) at Smolna 9. The group was founded in 2003 by three young musicians who took the name from Andrzej Panufnik, the renowned Polish composer and conductor. The trio has been awarded a number of prizes at various European festivals and has worked with David Harrington, of the Kronos Quartet, in arranging contemporary songs.
27th of September (Sunday)
De Stilte – a project involving cello, saxophones, clarinet, double bass, drums and vocals. De Stilte is silence, harmony, music and theatre. A project that cannot be clearly labelled. A combination of the arts, sounds and words; an illusory reality… and jazz, of course. It incorporates musicians, an actor, the audience, complete equilibrium; in a word, a show.
More info at the Smolna website.
