Malta Arts Festival pushes for new talent

A showcase of local and international culture, the Festival has become a staple summer event since it was first organised in 2006.

The programme for this year's edition, announced earlier this week, reveals that unlike last year, the Festival will feature a visual arts showcase. However, a Shakespeare performance by the Globe Theatre in London - a regular feature in previous editions of the Festival - will not take place this time around.

A number of regulars have however made their way into the repertoire, among them the Italian cellist Enrico Dindo - who will be performing on the islands for the seventh consecutive time - and the Norway-based theatre group Odin Teatret.

In line with its efforts to encourage up-and-coming local artists, this year's edition of the Festival will also include two notable initiatives: Theatre Week and the Emerging Artists Series.

Featuring an extensive assortment of workshops, talks, demonstrations, and performances, Theatre Week offers theatre practitioners and enthusiasts a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with some of today's most distinguished thespian visionaries.

The Llanarth Group and Phillip Zarrilli will present Making the Body All Eyes, an intensive workshop on acting techniques applied to structured improvisations and performance problems of Samuel Beckett's plays.

They will also be giving four special performances of a selection of Beckett's late-period short plays, including Not I, a play which was inspired by Caravaggio's The Beheading of St. John the Baptist during the playwright's stay in Malta in 1971.

Furthermore, Odin Teatret will present their latest group performance The Chronic Life and a work demonstration On Dramaturgy conducted by artistic director Eugenio Barba with Odin Teatret actress Julia Varley.

Meanwhile, the Emerging Artists Series aims at promoting the work of exceptionally talented, young local artists, allowing them to showcase their art alongside the cultural heavyweights featured in the Festival. Included in this series will be violinist Jean Noël Attard and pianist Joanne Camilleri, and Batera Duo - featuring saxophonist Philip Attard and pianist Christine Zerafa.

Following their immensely successful debut performance at the Festival last year, the world-famous Kronos Quartet returns to deliver another of contemporary classical music, with A Thousand Nights.

The concert will feature, amongst others, music by two celebrated contemporary composers, Sofia Gabaidulina and Laurie Anderson.

Renowned classical guitarist Simon Schembri will be joining forces with the Parisii Quartet for an evening of chamber music that will feature music by Maltese composer Joseph Vella.

Music lovers will also be regaled to a special performance by FEW Trio, which features world-music specialists guitarist Louis Winsberg, double bass player Renaud Garcia-Fons and tabla player Prabhu Edouard joining forces.

The Israeli Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company, who have become respected around the globe for their unique and alluring performances, will be showcasing Bombyx Mori, an experimental dance piece that interweaves various artistic disciplines into a novel stage creation informed by the human condition.

Artist Austin Camilleri will be curating a visual arts exhibition entitled Wicc Imb Wiċċ: Images of the Self, which explores personal images of and by contemporary artists.

The exhibition explores self-identities within the practices of ten local and international contemporary artists in contrast with guest works from public collections.

All artworks have never been shown in Malta, with most artists creating entirely new works specifically for the exhibition.

The Malta Arts Festival has also commissioned two standalone performances exclusively for the festival.

Following last year's sold-out Malta Arts Festival concert Ftakar, The Big Band Brothers under the direction of Daniel Cauchi, continue with the second phase of their Maltese music revival Ftakar 2. This year's concert will be especially dedicated to the songs penned by well-known artist Alfred C. Sant and will take the audience on a journey through this local songwriter's musical career.

The second commission is a devised theatre performance by the rubberbodies collective titled Old Salt: (A) Portrait of Seamen. Set against the stirring backdrop of the Birgu Grand Harbour Marina, Old Salt sees the multi-disciplinary rubberbodies collective reaching into the past to revive the harbour's deepest secrets.

The Festival comes to an elegant close with a special performance of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, St Monica's Choir and Mirabitur Choir under the direction of world-renowned conductor Wayne Marshall, who returns to pick up the baton for his third consecutive appearance at the Festival.

Maestro Marshall will also be giving an organ recital at St Augustine's Parish Church Valletta, which will simultaneously serve as an inauguration of the newly refurbished Mascioni pipe-organ within the priory. The organ was built in 1952 by the Mascioni firm of Varese, Italy.

For more information log on to www.maltaculture.com.