Today, on 15 June 2020 the Riga Jurmala Academy has announced that Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes will be leading an online masterclass next week on 18 June, starting 17PM - 21PM (EET), free to watch live online. Young pianists from the Baltic States Kārlis Bukovskis (Latvia) and Tähe-Lee Liiv (Estonia) will receive one-on-one tuition with the pianist, hailed by the New York Times as “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight”. Andsnes was due to perform at the Riga Jurmala Music Festival this summer, and teach in the Academy. Instead, the tuition will take place online, and will be available to watch live on the Academy’s Facebook page.
Classic FM, Britain’s largest classical radio station, has included the Rīga Jūrmala Festival’s educational programme among its latest list of the most significant classical music broadcasts this summer.
The Board of Trustees of the Riga Jurmala Music Festival today announced the decision to suspend the Riga Jurmala Music Festival until 2021. Although the Board and the entire festival team remained optimistic until the last moment that all or some of the planned events could proceed this summer, the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Latvian Government’s guidelines led to the regrettable decision of cancelling the events planned for this year. The Board deemed that any other course of action would have presented too great a risk to the health and safety of the festival’s audiences, artists and staff.
The Latvian Government has extended the national state of emergency until 12 May 2020, at which point they will provide further guidance. Based on this new guidance, we anticipate informing you on or about 15 May about any potential changes in this year’s schedule of the Riga Jurmala Music Festival. We guarantee that, if we are required to cancel any concerts, ticketholders will receive a full reimbursement for the face value of tickets to those affected performances.
Please be informed that we have been carefully monitoring the evolving situation with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Latvian Government guidelines. The measures that were announced on 12 March by the Latvian Government declaring a state of emergency until 14 April, at the moment in no way affect the festival's programme planned to take place this summer from 10 July till 30 August.
The new symphony orchestra Festival has been awarded with the 1st place in the Event PR category, appreciating it’s achievement in local and international communication and outreach. In it’s inaugural year, the Festival has attracted more than 15 200 classical music lovers from more than 50 countries. Festival’s programme and achievement were covered in more than 250 publications in international media, including in such prestigous outlets as the Telegraph, The Guardian, Independent, Condé Nast Traveller and others.
Riga Jurmala Music Festival has launched season 2020 with rich artistic programming, summer master classes (Riga Jurmala Academy) for Baltic and international talented young classical musicians, and today the Festival announces new and exciting collaboration with the 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2) and suddenly it all blossoms.
On 17 January 2020, conductor, pianist, musician, artist and humanist Vladimir Ashkenazy announced his retirement from public performances with immediate effect.
