Peace & Love opens up to classical music

With classical music, a new audience will discover the summer Peace & Love festival. The classical festival Peace & Lovestrings, which is planned for June 8-9, three weeks before the rock festival, is an attempt to break down the genre boundaries in the music world.

Peace & Love has grown to become Sweden's largest music festival. The ambition of the organizer, Jesper Heed, and the rest of the gang has always been to develop the festival into something other than just youthful fun. The collective message is that there is a world beyond the alcohol haze. Social debate and author meetings have been held in parallel with the rock music performances.

Mark Berrymen is taking the festival another step out into the as yet unknown, but points out that a great deal of today's rock music is influenced by classical music. Classical music embodies a lot of emotion just like rock. There may have never been a sister festival if he had not been a close acquaintance of Anders Lagerqvist, a violinist and Artistic Manager for Sveriges Radio's symphony orchestra and a number of other ensembles.

"With Anders' contacts, the starting field of the classical festival will be extremely strong," says Mark. "Peace & Love is a living festival and is constantly developing so I don't think the idea is far-fetched. You hear Jonny Cash on the car radio and think it's great, but you can get the same feel-good feeling with classical music. I want more people to discover this."

A few headliners are already set. Guitarist Göran Söllscher, composer Sven-David Sandström, Stina Ekblad and the pianist Mats Wiklund will all be there.

Around 900 tickets will be sold.

Source: Dalademokraten, Hans Dahlqvist, 1/19/2012 www.dalademokraten.se