Arts&Ideas

Since the inauguration of the first Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow in 1988, some performers have almost become fixtures as they appear year after year.

One of the main strengths of this year's Jewish Cultural festival was undoubtedly the numerous daily workshops that allowed festival-goers to immerse themselves in Jewish culture.

Renowned British progressive rock band, Porcupine Tree, will perform on Saturday, July 7, in Hala Wisly, supported by a promising young group, Pure Reason Revolution, also from the UK.

The wing of the Ethnographic Museum on ul. Krakowska 46 is making its own contribution to the 17th Jewish Culture Festival with an exhibition of Jerzy Duda-Gracz's (1941-2004) Jewish-inspired paintings, drawings and linoleum prints entitled El Male Rachamim (God Full of Mercy).

The 17th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow is being presented by the media as a string of concerts by prominent musicians from all over the world.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will perform on the Silesian Stadium in Chorzow on Tuesday July 3, during their current tour. The band will play with the Australian group Jet.

The five artists in the Ladnie Group say they never formed an artists' association. Others did that for them by lumping them together and giving their collected work a name.

Inside Krakow's raging music scene of hip-hop, drum-and-bass and disco-dance clubs, Krakow's Academy of Music has a well-kept secret in its composition program -- a secret that has finally come out through its own public diploma concerts at aula Floriana.

Krakow has so many places connected with the man who became John Paul II that it is impossible to see them all in one day. The locations where Karol Wojtyla lived, worked, contemplated or relaxed are called, appropriately enough, the papal footsteps. Each day tourists from around the world trace them.

This remarkable cycle of sonatas for violin and harpsichord was written around 1720 in Coethen where Bach held the post of Kapellmeister (musical director) at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Coethen. Truly unique in the repertoire of the period, the six sonatas occupy a special place in the instrumental music of the 18th Century.