WELCOME TO KAZAKHSTAN

Is it possible to travel through several centuries of world music in three evenings?Start with the songs of Whitney Houston, the next day find yourself among the heroes of Rossini, Verdi, and Offenbach, and end your journey among Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi—and suddenly hear the Beatles in a Baroque style.This is precisely what the 15th International Arts Festival "Astana Keshteri" turned out to be, bringing together artists from Kazakhstan and abroad in the capital from October 9th to 11th.The organizers decided not to tie the anniversary season to a single era or musical genre. Instead, each of the three evenings took on its own character. Pop music met a symphony orchestra, opera became a standalone stage show, and Baroque music entered into a dialogue with the 20th century.Over the past fifteen years, this openness to diverse genres has become one of the festival's hallmarks. According to the organizers, over a thousand artists and creative groups from dozens of countries have participated in its programs since then, with a total concert audience exceeding 100,000.October 9. The VoiceThe first evening began where the boundaries between classical and popular music virtually disappear.South African singer Belinda Davids, known for her performances of Whitney Houston's repertoire, took to the stage of the Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall. Her performance was accompanied by the Astana Opera Symphony Orchestra.Familiar "I Will Always Love You" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" sounded different in this setting. Orchestral arrangements gave the songs the scale of a concert score, but the voice remained at the center – the very instrument around which Whitney Houston's music was once built.Italian Roberto Molinelli, who has collaborated with Jose Carreras and Andrea Bocelli over the years, conducted. For him, Kazakhstan and Astana Keshteri have long ceased to be unfamiliar territory—the musician has been working with the festival for almost a decade.Molinelli particularly notes the Kazakhstani orchestra's ability to exist between different musical worlds."The Kazakhstani performers and musicians of the Astana Opera Orchestra possess an amazing level of training and, crucially for contemporary art, flexibility and openness to crossover experiments that combine classical, pop, and rock music," says the conductor.This thought practically defined the entire first evening.Here, the symphony orchestra didn't try to transform pop music into academic music. And a popular song wasn't reduced to a simplified version of a symphony concert. Two languages ​​coexisted.Belinda Davids later admitted that she was impressed by more than just the musicians' work. "What touched me most was the pride with which Kazakhstanis treat their country – literally in the first 40 minutes after landing, I learned so many interesting facts about your country and would like to return here next year," the singer said.The evening's special guest was Italian rock singer Simone Romanato.October 10. TheaterThe following day, the festival completely changed its tone.If the first evening was built around one recognizable voice, the second transformed the Astana Opera stage into a kaleidoscope of operatic characters.The premiere was called "Non-Stop OPERA."The program itself was unusual: instead of a full-scale production of one opera, the audience was treated to seventeen musical episodes from twelve works – eleven solo arias and six duets.Rossini followed Verdi. Following "Il viaggio a Reims," ​​came "Falstaff," then Offenbach's fantastical "The Tales of Hoffmann." Opera sat alongside Johann Strauss's operetta "Die Fledermaus," and European classics sat alongside Leonard Bernstein's musical comedy "Candide."This was less a concert of arias than an attempt to assemble a new stage production from individual works.The program was conceived by European vocal coach Alla Simoni. Moreover, it deliberately included not only famous numbers that audiences had heard dozens of times, but also works rarely performed on the Kazakh stage.Such a project also required an unusual cast of performers. Soloists from the opera houses of Astana, Almaty, and Tashkent shared the stage: Bibigul Zhanuzak, Leila Alamanova, Feruza Yusupova, Medet Chotabayev, Rasul Zharmagambetov, Shyngys Rasylkhan, Azat Malik, Damir Saduakhasov, and Zhandarbek Yerkinbayev.The orchestra was conducted by Italian conductor Ettore Papadia, making his first visit to Kazakhstan.The festival premiere, however, could have a lifespan significantly longer than just one evening. After the performance, the organizers announced plans to include "Non-Stop OPERA" in the Astana Opera's permanent repertoire.This is an important achievement for the festival: a project created for a specific event can transcend its timeframe and continue to exist as an independent work.October 11. TimeThe third evening seemed to deliberately slow down the festival's momentum. After the grand vocals of the first day and the operatic dynamics of the second, it was time for music written several centuries ago.Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Marcello.Here, the protagonist was no longer the individual vocalist or the stage performance, but the ensemble.The Astana Opera Orchestra was led by conductor Yevgeny Bushkov. Joining him on stage were French oboist and professor at the Paris Conservatory Jérôme Guichard, performing for the first time in Kazakhstan, flautist Yerzhan Kushanov, and the State Trio of the Republic of Kazakhstan FORTE TRIO.The trio was represented by violinist Maksat Dzhusupov, cellist Murat Narbekov, and pianist Timur Urmancheyev.The finale of the program was perhaps the most unexpected musical turn of the entire three-day festival. After Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, and Marcello, two movements from Peter Bryner's concerto, based on Beatles themes and stylized as Vivaldi, were performed.It was as if the circle had come full circle.The festival began with popular music, transported to the space of a symphony orchestra, and ended with 20th-century popular music reimagined through the language of the Baroque.Three centuries of musical history passed between these two points.That's why the 15th anniversary of Astana Keshteri was not so much a retrospective of the festival itself as a demonstration of its main principle: musical eras don't necessarily exist in isolation."What we've been doing for 15 years isn't just a few vibrant musical evenings. It's a long-term investment in the development of our country's cultural heritage and the broadening of the horizons of the younger generation," says Laura Akhmetova, director of the DEGDAR Humanitarian Foundation and the Astana Keshteri Festival. Over the past fifteen years, the festival's artists, programs, and genres have changed. But the idea itself has remained the same: to bring musicians from different schools and cultures together.This became especially noticeable during the anniversary season.South African voices sang alongside the Kazakh symphony orchestra. Italian conductors collaborated with musicians from Astana. Soloists from three cities collaborated on an opera production. A French oboist made his debut on the Kazakh stage.And the music of the Beatles unexpectedly found itself next to Vivaldi.Perhaps it is in such encounters that the festival discovers its true meaning: culture becomes more interesting not when different traditions exist separately, but when they engage in a conversation.