The third Road to Yalta International Music Festival this year will be held in the resort capital of Crimea from April 29 to May 2.
The jury received more than 300 applications to participate in the competition from 51 countries of the world. In the final stage representatives of 15 countries will sing on the festival stage: Austria, Argentina, Great Britain, Israel, India, Italy, Canada, China, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, USA, Turkey, France, Sweden. This was reported on the official website of the event.
Artistic director of the festival, journalist Ernest Mackevičius noted that this year the number of applications for participation in the competition has doubled. The RIA Novosti Crimea site writes about this with reference to the Sputnik radio.
"The number of applications has doubled in comparison with the first season, more than 300 applications from 51 countries of the world were received for the qualifying stage, which was held online due to the pandemic. Performers from 15 countries were qualified to the semifinals. New members include India and Canada. It is important to tell by music what the price of this war was and who won it, so that this would not happen again," Ernest Mackevičius said.
According to Lev Leshchenko ― the chairman of the festival jury, People's Artist of Russia, the festival brings together singers from distant abroad and post-Soviet countries on one stage, which undoubtedly will unite people.
"War songs are already our cultural code, everyone in the post-Soviet countries knows them, because there is no family that did not lose their members in that war," the artist said in a comment to Sputnik radio.
By the way, not only members of the jury, but also the audience of the festival can choose the best performer. Online voting for festival participants started on April 2 and will end on May 1. The performances of the contestants are already available on the festival website.
"Each video clip deserves attention, the contestants translated Soviet songs about that war into their native languages. That is, they put those songs under their skin, and the soulfulness of our war songs will be felt not only in music, but also in the meaning through understanding the text," a member of the jury Kai Metov said during the broadcast.
The first Road to Yalta festival took place in May 2019, the author of the project was a well-known journalist Andrey Kondrashov, the author of the "Crimea. The Road to the Homeland" documentary. The last year festival was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory and its main feature was that foreign vocalists performed popular Soviet military songs in a duet with Russian pop stars.
