24th edition of the "Song of Our Roots" International Early Music Festival will be held in Jarosław in August 21-28, 2016. The programme offers 7 concerts, seminars, workshops and other fringe events.

This year, a "myth" has been chosen as the Festival’s main theme. However, it does not refer to literary texts associated with ancient Greece or other historic cultures, but rather to the term defined from an anthropological point of view, a concept of an archetypical figure, an instrument of cognition, which transfers contents related to identity, forms a vehicle of collective memory, and conveys a conceptualization of fundamental aspects of human existence and its sense.

The programme of this year’s edition includes also a series of presentations and seminars that will underline celebrations of 60th birthday of Marcel Pérès – musicologist, composer, singer, expert in the field of liturgical chant tradition and an honorary citizen of Jarosław.

The Festival’s highlights:

- L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi - masterpiece of European music, regarded as the first opera in the history;

- Descensus ad inferos - Rafał Augustyn, Cantores Minores Wratislavienses, Schola Gregoriana Silesiensis and Schola Cantorum Minorum Chosoviensis - apocryphal oratorio commissioned by the Festival and written by contemporary composer Rafał Augustyn;

- Missa Ex Tempore - Marcel Pérès and Camerata Silesia - composition that refers to early forms of sacred music, however uses contemporary compositional techniques;

- Voie des songes - Ensemble Organum - repertoire presenting Corsican polyphony, Mozarabic chant, Morrocan Samaa tradition, Beneventan chant, works of Ockeghem and Machaut as well as the ensemble leader’s own compositions;

- Sulla Lira - Le Miroir de Musique - a myth of Orfeo and his Lyre presented in different musical forms that have emerged throughout centuries, from ancient Greek hymns to late Renaissance works of Italian composers.

More information: www.festiwal.jaroslaw.pl