Last night, with the program "Piazza of Jazz" and the last performance within the series of jazz concerts, completed the entire program of the international KotorArt festival. Over 46 festival days of this year's edition, more than 1500 artists from 25 countries participated and performed more than 300 programs - 53 major and over 250 supporting ones.
The festival is sponsored by the Municipality of Kotor and the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro, as well as with the support of important friends and sponsors - Coca-Cola, Lustica Bay, Porto Montenegro, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, the Hungarian Embassy in Montenegro, the Tourist Organization of Kotor, Huma, Junus Emre Institute, Accion cultural Espanola and many other partners. In this way, the festival provides almost 40% of the total budget through sponsorships, donations, and its own funds. Media partners of the festival are RTCG and Pobjeda, and media friends are all major media in Montenegro.
KotorArt is grateful to patrons, artists, audiences, all sponsors, friends as well as media partners for their outstanding cooperation and broadcast of all program activities.
Participants in this year's edition of the festival came from Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Armenia, Turkey, Israel, China and Russia.
This year's edition of the festival took place from June 27 to August 11 at numerous locations in Kotor and across Boka Bay through four program units: XVIII KotorArt Festival Klapa Perast, XXVII KotorArt Kotor Festival of Children's Theater, XVIII KotorArt Don Branko Music Days and IX KotorArt Philosopher's square.
XVIII KotorArt Klapa Perast Festival hosted female, male and mixed klapa groups from Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina who competed in different categories. The jury was composed of Mojmir Cacija - president, Zlata Marjanovic, Mario Katavic, Zorana Larkovic, Marina Dulovic, Jasminko Setka and Vladimir Begovic.
In the category of best female klapa, according to the expert jury, the winners were the Lusa klapa from Split. In the category of best male group, the winners were the group Conra, also from Split. The New Klapa Song Award went to author Marko Šimić for his song “Love” by Lusa, performed by the Klapa Lusa from Split. Also, as part of the Hungarian Culture Week event, the concert was also held by a Capella band Fool Moon from Hungary.
XXVII KotorArt Festival for Children's Theater was held under the slogan "Trip to the Moon". From 01 to 12 July, Kotor was a city of children, and the children had the opportunity to attend performances from many countries, workshops and panels. This year, the 27th in a row, the Kotor Festival of Children's Theater marked as many as 24 plays within the theater program. During the 12 festival days, 16 performances were performed in this part of the program, of which there were 12 premieres and 4 shows. A total of 109 programs were realized at the Festival.
IX KotorArt Philosopher's Square was held on August 10 and 11, entitled "How to Think of Refuge". The editor of this year's Piazza was Paula Petricevic, a philosopher, activist, feminist, Master of Political Science. Carna Brkovic's lectures were presented on this topic through the thesis "Humanitarianism as a Politics of Citizenship" and a lecture by Adriana Zaharijevic with the topic "We refugees: A life that cannot be lived".
XVIII KotorArt Don Branko's days of music marked the 40th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in 1979, as well as placing on the UNESCO list of the world's heritage through orders and performing new works. The concerts are divided into several series: Top Art Music, where this year we could once again hear the very top of the world stage, such as Yuja Wang, Andreas Ottensamer, Narek Hahnazarjan, Blythe Teh-Engstrem, Roman Simovic and many others; then the Coca-Coca Stage, where music and popular music intertwined with concerts dedicated to Oliver Dragojevic, but also those of Massimo Savic and Sergej Cetkovic with the orchestra of young talents; Jazz Market, a series of 5 Sunday jazz concerts at the Museum of Kotor Market in Kotor; KotorArt Talents, a platform for young, successful artists strongly supported by the Festival; as well as the Port of Art, perhaps the favorite series of Kotor caterers, passers-by and tourists, performances by various ensembles in the squares in the Old Town.
In addition to the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, we also listened to two Festival Orchestra concerts, the RTS Grand Jazz Orchestra, the No Borders Orchestra and many other bands. KotorArt was also an important partner in the implementation of the Hungarian Culture Week program in Montenegro and hosted the directors of major festivals from Verbier and Shanghai. According to preliminary estimates, the Festival's main and supporting programs were attended by more than 40 thousand visitors.
Photo credit: Duško Miljanić, Krsto Vulović
Text by CdM, on August 13th, 2019, read more at CdM
