International Music Festival Imago Slovenia
Classical and early music, which used to be the focus of the original festival, have been gradually joined by jazz and ethno concerts, and occasionally even some rock atcs. In producing its musical projects, the festival regularly cooperates with different institutions like the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, the Slovene Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTV Slovenia Big Band.
The festival concept
The most important aims of the project revolve around the ideas of introducing live and contemporary artistic expressions to the already culturally rich, but often neglected heritage settings; the expansion of diverse artistic forms into smaller towns; the promotion of classical music, artists and performers; and accessibility to cultural goods, which is also why the concerts have free admission.
Venues
The programme takes place at different places and has up until now encompassed about two dozen cities and towns around Slovenia (Bled, Dobrna, Kranjska gora, Maribor, Metlika, Nova Gorica, Piran, Ribnica, Škofja Loka, Velenje, Vipava, etc) and also abroad (Gorizia and Trieste in Italy, Bleiberg in Austria and Trieste, Szentgotthárd in Hungary; all of these places have a significant Slovenian population). The events are organised in various co-productions with the local producers.
Some of the venues are the Ribnica Castle, the Bela krajina Museum, the City Museum of Ljubljana, the Velenje Castle, the Ormož Castle, Loka Castle, the Kromberk Castle, the main square in Kranjska gora, the St. Jacobs Church in Ljubljana and a number of other churches, mansions and public squares.
Programme
The main bulk of the programme of the festival consists of classical music from different periods for various chamber groups, choirs or symphony orchestras. The festival has cooperated with literally thousands of artists both from Slovenia and abroad, so the Prokofiev Guitar Duo, Ljubljana Vocal Academy, Slovene Philharmonic Orchestra, the Accord Quartet (HU), the Harvard Din & Tonics (US), the Egyptian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra (EG), the Wolverhampton Youth Orchestra and the Wolverhampton Youth Wind Orchestra (UK), Coro Filarmonico Trentino (IT), the CREA Symphony Orchestra (DK), the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra (UK) and Trio Smetana (CZ) present a very limited overview.
Jazz and ethno now also play an important feature in the programme, which has hosted a very diverse set of artists, a few of them being Katalena, Barcelona Gipsy Klezmer Orchestra (ES), Jean Toussaint Four (US) and Yasuto Ohara Super Jazz Trio (JP). Since 2009, the jazz programme is run as a special category of the festival, called The Jazz Stage.
Four concerts from each season are recorded by Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV Slovenia) and five by Radio Slovenia.