Christmas festival with Norwegian musicians
Arkhangelsk city and Norwegian Barents Secretariat cooperate on making the annual winter festival international.
In Arkhangelsk the central cultural event of the first week of the year is the festival “Christmas Rings”.
The festival is held in the city for the fourth year and gives people a lot of possibilities to relax and wile away the time as the long Russian Christmas holidays takes place in early January. In addition, all museums, cultural centers are open, shops and restaurants filled by people.
The municipality of Arkhangelsk is trying to make the festival of the visiting cards of this biggest northern Russian city so it could be not only an entertainment for the citizens but also an attraction for the tourists from other parts of the country and abroad.
This is the second time when the cultural department of the city administration cooperates with the office of Norwegian Barents Secretariat that also serves as Honorary Consulate of Norway in Arkhangelsk. The main issue of this cooperation is to make the winter festival international and use the possibilities of Barents cooperation so that the artists from Norway could also be the part of the festival program.
Last year the guest star of “Christmas Rings” was Terje Isungset with his ice music concert. This year Arkhangelsk enjoyed performances of jazz quartet “ExHale” and outstanding vocalist Therese Ulvan from Tromsø. The Norwegian musicians took part in spectacular Christmas Jazz Party on the 7th of January in the museum of artistic exploration of the Arctic where they played together with the local jazz musicians.
On Tuesday, the Christmas songs from Norway sounded in the open air concert on the bank of Northern Dvina river. The tour of Therese Ulvan and “ExHale” was arranged by Rune Paulsen, the producer from Northern Norway and was partly funded by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.
