ARTISTS 2025
The ticket sale will start medio January 2025

From Ukraine, in 2025 we will be visited for the first time by the pianist Anna Fedorova. She was the first musician to organize a charity concert for the victims of the war already on 6 March 2022. She plays around the world with symphony orchestras, in recitals and at festivals, and with her 45 solo performances at the Concertgebow in Amsterdam, she is jokingly characterized as their house pianist. She has distinguished herself on Rachmaninov and Scriabin, and her concert recording of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto now has over 37 million views on YouTube. But in Lofoten we get to hear her in Chopin's very finest works, the four Ballades.

Arvid Engegård is an institution in Norwegian music life. His quartet - the Engegårdquartette, our house band - celebrates 20 years next year. The quartet tours extensively throughout Norway and abroad. The discography counts 20 releases. He regularly conducts all the country's orchestras. With his trio of accordion and bass, he plays everything from classical pearls to old dance and tours the country. He is also the artistic director of the Engegård Quartet's own festival 1,2,3, where they focus on one composer over the course of a weekend. He also watches as many games as he can with the football team from his hometown, Bodø-Glimt.

With his roots from Værøy, Joachim Carr from Bergen is 1/8 part Lofoten! He also enjoys this spectacular region and participated in the festival for the first time already in 2014. Then as winner of the Grieg competition in 2012. He then also chose Stamsund church for his solo album with music by, among others, Liszt, Bach/ Busono and the Messiah. With us, he plays nothing less than Beethoven's last sonata, op. 111. Furthermore, there will be a French suite by Bach. He will also collaborate with the festival's two Norwegian folk musicians. And not least, there will be spectacular events in John Adams Halleluja Junction with Marc-André Hamelin!

Dénes Varjon is next to Sir Andras Schiff Hungary's most famous pianist. He visited the festival in Lofoten for the first time in 2015, and in 2022 was artistic director of our piano edition. He was back already in 2023, and in 2025 will perform Elgar's piano quintet with the Engegård Quartet, Chopin's Fantasy in F minor, op. 49 and Beethoven's sonata in E major, opus 109. As always, there will also be music by Bartok.

Canadian Marc-André Hamelin belongs to the world's top pianists. Few master such a wide repertoire. He is equally at home in Haydn, Mozart and Schubert as in more unknown repertoire by Busoni, Alkan and Medtner. But in his discography of an impressive 90 recordings, we also find jazz-inspired music and ragtime. And not least his own music. In Lofoten, we get to hear him in Beethoven's famous and infamous Hammer Clavier Sonata, in Rachmaninov's insanely virtuosic second sonata, but not least in his own new piano quintet. An ever-so-small highlight will be Adam's Halleluja Junctions for two pianos with our own pianistJoachim Carr.

Berit Opheim is one of Norway's foremost singers with folk music as her most important area. In 2023, she was awarded the Statens Kunstnerstipend for 10 years, and in the same year nominated for the Nordic Council's Music Prize. In 2023 she was also awarded the Hilmar Prize, and in 2024 she received the Folk Music Prize from the Norwegian Center for Folk Music and Folk Dance. Opheim has a very varied palette of musical expressions, and has performed both medieval music, early baroque and contemporary music. She has premiered many works in various genres. She has taught at the Grieg Academy, the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Rauland Academy and several other places, and collaborated with many of Norway's leading performers, ensembles and orchestras. Opheim has participated in more than 50 recordings, several of them solo. In Lofoten, she focuses on folk music.

Per Anders Buen Garnås started playing the harding fiddle already at the age of 6, inspired by his uncles Hauk and Knut. He has apprenticed with players in various traditions, but especially from Telemark. Today he is among Norway's most respected folk musicians, and he has won the Landskappleiken a total of 6 times, most recently in 2024. He participates in several recordings, and for his solo albums he has won the Folke-Larmprisen twice. In Lofoten, he will play traditional Harding fiddle tunes, and not least the originals of several of Grieg's arrangements of these in his op. 72. This in a concert where Joachim Carr plays the same arrangements.