Festival “Summertime - invites Inessa Galante” / Grand opening / Igudesman & Joo (Austria), Adam Ben Ezra (Israel)

Grand opening of the Festival “Summertime — invites Inessa Galante” .

Igudesman & Joo (Austria), Adam Ben Ezra (Israel).

The guests of the grand opening of the THE BEST OF festival “Summertime — invites Inessa Galante” are waiting for a real musical sensation — the performance of the duo Igudesman & Joo (Austria). One-of-a-kind founders of a unique genre, virtuoso musicians Aleksey Igudesman and Hyung-Ki Joo combine classical music and comedy theatrical shows in their performances.

On August 18, viewers will see a new sparkling program called Play it Again. Often the best part of a concert is the encore. So why not start right with him, the artists reasonably thought. The Play it Again show consists of the duet's best numbers, performed as encores many times at the request of the public around the world. In addition, the Play it Again show will be presented in the new linguistic form of Igudesman & Joo — in a kind of global, multicultural Esperanto language that everyone can understand!

“Igudesman & Joо” will perform on the stage of Dzintari Concert Hall together with a specially invited guest from Israel — a virtuoso double bass player and multi-talented instrumentalist Adam Ben Ezra. The musician became famous thanks to his unique approach to playing the double bass using several modern electronic gadgets. In turn, videos with cover versions of popular melodies on YouTube have millions of views. Adam turns concerts into unforgettable shows in which the double bass becomes a universal instrument and sounds like a fully-fledged live orchestra.

The evening will be opened by the opera diva, inspirer and muse of the festival, Inessa Galante, and the popular Latvian actor, comedian Janis Skutelis.

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The history of formation of the duet “Igudesman & Joo” embodies the musicians' approach to creativity — easy, capricious and somewhat eccentric. Violinist Aleksey Igudesman and pianist Hyung-Ki Joo met in an English school cafeteria eating fried potatoes. Over the years, their innovative music shows filled with humour and charisma have become real internet hits. The videos of the artists in total have over 50 millions views, and their concerts are sold out all over the world.

Alexey Igudesman is a violinist, composer, conductor, comedian, film maker, actor, writer, poet and entrepreneur. Aleksey has written for and performed as a soloist on several movie soundtracks. He has worked particularly closely with Academy Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer on numerous movies, including “Sherlock Holmes” that received an Oscar nomination for the Best Original Score.

Hyung-Ki Joo is an outstanding pianist, composer and comedian. Joo is a follower of the musical genius Yehudi Menuhin, who became the most famous violinist and conductor of the last century. Yehudi himself chose Joo to perform as a soloist at his eightieth birthday concert at London's Barbican Hall. Notable projects include arranging and recording classical piano pieces for an album by one of the six best-selling US artists of all time, Billy Joel. The recorded album “Fantasies & Delusions” spent 18 weeks at number one in the Billboard album chart.

Together with American actor John Malkovich, Emmy Award winner, Oscar and Golden Globe nominee, the musicians created the innovative show “The Music Critic”, with which they successfully tour around the world till today. In addition, among the collaborations with the actor is the release of a CD with a “self-explanatory” title “You Just Have to Laugh”.