Festival report: A summer full of music in Vilnius

How he can keep on his feet at all! Because the heels of the women's shoes that Božo Vrećo wears during his performance in Vilnius are not only very narrow, but also quite high. But the Bosnian whirls across the stage with them, dances or spins like a dervish, as if he were wearing trainers. Respect! A real bird of paradise is giving a concert with his band at the Kristupo Festivalis. Vréco wears a red, sleeveless dress and a dark full beard; visually, one is immediately reminded of Tom Wirth alias Conchita Wurst, who won the European Song Contest for Austria in 2014 as a man in drag. Božo Vrećo, who has tattoos almost all over his body, doesn't really want to decide whether he is a man or a woman. In Vilnius, he put on a real show. Musically, the colourful bird of paradise has his roots in Sevdah music, Bosnian love and longing songs. With an angelic voice, Vréco sings these songs passionately and emotionally, but then turns them with his three-piece band perhaps a little too often in the direction of danceable Balkan pop.

It started at the end of June and runs until the beginning of September. The Kristupo Festivalis (Christopher Summer Festival) in Lithuania's beautiful capital Vilnius is not only the city's biggest musical summer event, it also offers a diverse program. Not every evening, but this year there are a total of 24 concerts ranging from classical music, opera galas, sacred music, world music and sometimes jazz. The latter, for example, at the so-called picnic concerts with free admission in the pretty Bernadine Park, right next to the old town. There you can make yourself comfortable with a blanket on the ground and listen to French jazz or the well-known Lithuanian pop singers Petunija and Liucė. In St. Casimir's Church, built in the 17th century, the young Polish organist Marcin Kucharczyk demonstrates on the mighty church organ, the best in the Baltic States, as festival director Jurgita Murauskienė says with pride, in a programme with pieces by Bach, Samuel Scheidt or Matthias Weckmann, how he knows how to combine virtuosity with sensitive playing.

 The church is a popular venue for the festival, but so is the courtyard of a library in the middle of the picturesque old town of Vilnius. Several illustrious names of pop and world music played there in the open air. For example, the Portuguese Luísa Sobral, singer, songwriter, musician and composer of the global hit "Amar pelos Dois", with which her younger brother Salvador Sobral won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017. Her artful pop songs, mostly sung in Portuguese, are predominantly happy songs to life and happiness in life. But the Ukraine war also serves as a source of inspiration. They are special songs, not necessarily always super catchy, but charismatic and sung by a woman who has something to tell and does it in a poetic way. The fact that at the end of her performance she tries her hand at a song in Lithuanian by the well-known Lithuanian singer-songwriter Vytautas Kernagis - the audience in the sold-out courtyard thanks her with rapturous applause.

And then there was Gaby Moreno with her band performing in VIlnius. The singer/songwriter from Guatemala, who has lived in Los Angeles for almost two decades, offers music from both her worlds. The long years in America have rubbed off in blues-rock songs and music between folk and country. Then it's loud, then the electric guitar is pushing. But Moreno also has soft songs with a Latin American flavour in her programme, even playing a small set within her concert all alone with just her guitar around her neck. And with the old Cuban catchy tune "Quizás, quizás, quizás" she underlines once again that she has her roots in Latin America.