Get positive in Salacgrīva
Expect Rīga to be quieter over the weekend as the 10th Positivus Festival is taking place Friday to Sunday with acts like Grimes, Iggy Pop, Hot Chip, Air, M83, Mark Rohnson and others taking the stage at the glorious seaside town of Salacgrīva.
This is the largest festival in the Baltics and people from Estonia and elsewhere are to flock to enjoy days of revelry, music and drinking. Here's how to avoid traffic jams while en route to the festival. Police say you should drink only in moderation and not use drugs.
Various luminaries will be in attendance, including Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves who'll be signing copies of his "Teenage Wasteland – Favourites 1963-1978" compilation on Sunday.
Witness the arts in Cēsis
Starting July 15 to August 6 Cēsis is to turn in to a veritable citadel of the arts, with the Cēsis Arts Festival featuring a diverse range of art forms, including classical music concerts, art exhibitions, opera and drama performances, and so on.
This weekend is packed with must-sees as the festival opens with a performance of Cello Concerto No. 2 (‘Presence’) by Pēteris Vasks (1946), who is celebrating his 70th birthday this year.
Cellist Kristaps Bergs is appearing with the DD Orchestra on the concert, starting at 8 p.m. at the concert hall "Cēsis".
On Saturday and Sunday film and music performances are continuing, with Jānis Šipkēvics, a member of the Instrumenti band, performing an intimate concert of songs with lyrics by Aspazija, Rainis, Ojārs Vācietis, Agnese Krivade to the tune of raditional folk poems, piano music by Philip Glass and a number of original pieces.
Here's the full program.
Talk with an artist in Daugavpils
British artist Paul Huxley, whose retrospective exhibition Six Decades Of is slated to open at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center at 4 p.m. Friday, will on Saturday at 12 in the afternoon answer questions and otherwise engage with the audience.
Huxley's work can be found in leading international and British museums, and as he knew Rothko from his travels in the US, it's pertinent that his exhibit be on show in Rothko's city of birth.
"For a few years in the mid 1960s I lived in New York and mixed with many of the key artists and writers of the period. All I can do is to tell of my encounters with these extraordinary people," says Huxley.
Entrance is free.
