Festival concept
The governing idea of the Festival includes quality entertainment, convey values, address different classes of the society, and is organized with the aim to shape communities and confirm identities through programmes and events.
The 12th International Percussion Festival Gyr will be held on 25-26 March 2011.
This two-day event is a significant event for percussionists in Hungary and is based upon percussion music culture and music training with several decades of experience in Gyr. Percussion music is a genre that can speak to all kinds of listeners, old and young alike, irrespective of their age. In addition to offering quality entertainment and popularising percussion music, the aim of this Festival has been to provide an opportunity for local talents and students of percussion to make their debut and show their skills to a wider audience. Representatives of the young generation can personally meet and "share the stage" with renowned percussionists from Hungary and around the world, which is sure to give them motivation to last throughout their lives, thus furthering and making a defining impact on their careers as percussionists.
The International Percussion Festival Gyr gives an opportunity to listen to pieces of classical music, jazz, world music, or contemporary percussion music. With the view to offer a wide variety of entertainment, in the course of making the Festivals programme, we considered complementing percussion shows with performances involving other music genres and related arts, instrument demonstrations, and workshops. The exhibition of percussion instruments is another integral part and traditional feature of the Festival. It serves both as a venue for the Hungarian representations of the world's most important musical instrument manufacturers and distributors to present their products and as an opportunity for the audience to sound the exhibited instruments.
In the past years many world stars including Jojo Mayer, Tom Brechtlein, Tommy Vig, Billy Cobham, Trilok Gurtu, and Ian Paice performed at the Percussion Festival of Gyr.
We keep on this nice tradition this year too, as we have invited, among other performers, Carl Palmer Band /Great Britain/, Kenny Hogan /Singapore/, Perkuva Percussion Ensemble / Spain/, Mark Mondesir, /Great Britain/.
Certainly, Hungarian classics have also been invited, just to name a few: Kornl Horvth, Percussion Ensemble of Gyr, and students at the Secondary School of Music and College for Music of Gyr. The joint performance of four young drummers of Gyr and the Percussion Ensemble of Gyr is a promise for the specialty-seeker. Open-stage concerts at Szchenyi square enrich the traditional street march music and show drumming.
As a matter of curiosity, we invite everybody rhythm-lovers to join and play any percussion or other rhythm-instruments as we plan to call hundreds of people to perform a well-known Hungarian song together.