Akord Festival Maribor
Programme
The first edition of the festival hosted modern and hybrid sounding musicians like the jazz oriented band Bratko Bibič & The Madleys and the innovative accordion players Jure Tori (who also plays in the rock band Orlek) and Lothar Lässer (an Austrian musician of wide ranging musical interests). The programme's course later changed to include more opposing musical visions (like the rock inclined KvinTon and the more traditional accordion virtuoso Klemen Rošer), thus accentuating both sides of the accordion's cultural positioning.
In terms of timing, the festival curiously chose the morning hours for the concerts and as such also see this as a way of urban revitalisation. Besides the concerts, there are also screenings of films that one way or another deal with the accordion, like the documentaries Harmonikarji [The Accordion players], which presents various Slovene accordion players of different musical credos, and V ritmu volovske vprjege [In the rhythm of the ox harness] which deals with the artistic path of the artists Uršula Ramoveš and her husband Janez.
Also, in the course of the festival in 2010, the hymns from Slovenia and other parts of Europe were for the first time adapted for accordion, and, a year later when the festival again took place, the notations were freely distributed to the interested public.
See also