Raimonds Pauls and the Latvian Radio Big Band

During Raimonds Pauls’ jubilee year, the Rīga Festival honours the maestro by offering a new concert programme, “Opera Arias,” developed in partnership with the Latvian Radio Big Band, a string group from the Sinfonietta Rīga chamber orchestra.

The programme will feature arias from globally famous composers, with melodies arranged by the British musician Callum Au, with whom the Latvian Radio Big Band has worked in the past, not least in terms of a recent project focused on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Piano Concerto in D Minor.  The young artist consolidated Bach’s music with jazz rhythms most elegantly, offering surprisingly good harmonies so as to shed light on undiscovered colours in the sounds of the Latvian Radio Big Band.  “Opera Arias,” too, will preserve the primeval essence and beauty of the melodies while presenting the arias in a new, surprising and harmonically colourful manner.  This will involve jazz and the special sound of the piano that is only possible when the legendary maestro is at the keyboards.  The audience will hear lovely melodies by Giacomo Puccini, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Camille Saint-Saëns, George Bizet (Carmen), Antonín Dvořák (Mermaids), and George Gershwin (Porgy and Bess).

Programme

Jazz arrangements of popular operatic areas

Participants

Raimonds Pauls
Latvijan Radio Bigband
Sinfonietta Rīga strings