Henri Herbert, Ieva Dūdaitė and Richard Galliano among the highlights at Vilnius‘s Kristupo Festivalis

What dexterity! How incredibly fast this man can play the piano! And so precisely, too. Both hands seem to work completely effortlessly and independently of each other. When it comes to technique, Henri Herbert is second to none. But the boogie woogie specialist from Austin, Texas also has everything else you need. The right feeling, the right swing, just the right energy. Herbert has named an album released in 2022 ‘Boogie Till I Die’. And that's exactly how he performs in the sold-out Kotryna church in Vilnius - boogie woogie to the last breath. An energetic experience that inevitably carries you away. A concert that could have been too boogie-orientated if Henri Herbert didn't also have other facets. That of a very good blues pianist and also a good singer. And how he then interpreted George Gershwin's world hit ‘Summertime’. As a moderate boogie, with rolling bass runs from the left hand, which he embellishes with fast-fingered improvisations with the right. Fantastic!

The Kristupo Festivalis (Christopher Summer Festival) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Jurgita Murauskienė has been involved in the largest summer music event in Vilnius for 20 years and has been the director of the cross-genre festival for 18 years. Her festival is organising almost 30 events over two and a half months. There are free picnic concerts in the park, a Spanish-Austrian flamenco guitar duo, a six-piece Cuban vocal combo or wonderfully interpreted music by Philip Glass with Lithuanian pianist Ieva Dūdaitė (pictured above - photo by Modestas Endriuška) and the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra. An organ concert series in a church is also part of the programme.

When selecting artists, the festival director is not so concerned with how famous they are, but what they convey from the stage. Personality and character, but also new sounds in their respective genre - that's what they have to bring to Jurgita Murauskienė. Richard Galliano fits the bill perfectly, as the accordionist has created his very own style with his New Musette. With his fantastic New York Tango Trio (pictured above - photo by Modestas Endriuška) with double bassist Diego Imbert and guitarist Adrien Moignard, the likeable Frenchman enchanted the audience at his open-air concert in the courtyard of a library in Vilnius' old town, who enjoyed the captivated sounds of his button accordion. Whether Piaf, Piazzolla or his own compositions such as the heart-warming, gently swinging ‘Chat Pître’, Galliano plays it all with a tenderness and clarity that is deeply moving. He plays a singing, plaintive, wistful, yearning music full of sweet melancholy, in which New Musette, tango and jazz merge into songs that you could listen to forever.    

Is it possible to top the emotion of Galliano's trio's performance? In any case, Cristina Branco will be giving a concert at the same venue the following day that will also get under your skin. The small Portuguese woman with the big voice has opened up fado in the course of her career to include tango and South American sounds. Even with the line-up of her trio, the singer in her early fifties shows that she thinks outside the box when it comes to fado. After all, the classical fado line-up does not include a piano. Luís Figueiredo, however, sets wonderful accents on the black and white keys. And double bassist Bernardo Moreira and Bernardo Couto on the Portuguese guitar, all three of whom play together in their own trio SUL, which is well worth listening to, enrich the world of fado with their understanding of their many years of activity in other musical fields such as jazz. Lots of longing, devotion, poetry and sounds, such as in the song ‘Este Silêncio’, which begins intimately and vulnerably and then becomes unusually percussive with tapping and rubbing by all three musicians - Cristina Branco interprets Portuguese fado in Vilnius with her own refreshing flavour.