Aksel falls in love with Belgrade

Aksel spent 10 wonderful days in this amazing town with a cultural history from another world and time. While walking down the historical road with old restaurants and cultural events, Aksel could simply just think of one word - amazing.

How could the Turkish people ever leave such a great city... Hundreds of years later, Belgrade was infact the first city where the outstanding conductor Zubin Mehta had his first professional engagement with Belgrade Philharmonic after he had fihished his studies. The 2nd trumpet-player of todays Belgrade Philharmonic, the virtuoso Aleksandar Soulnac, is together with Aksel Kolstad now preparing the first Café de Concert-concert in Belgrade in the little hall of the Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Aksel Kolstad´s Dalí-pieces (experience the Dalí-paintings and Kolstad´s Dalí-compositions on Aksel´s former website) for soloists and orchestra in addition to a couple of more compositions Kolstad will write for the same event. There will be put together a sinfonietta with musicians and soloists from Belgrade Philharmonic in addition to the exeptional pianist Andrijana Radivojevic. The sinfonietta, soloists and Aksel Kolstad will also present a new design for classical musicians on a traditional arena for both classical and contemporary music.

Café de Concert has heard of some interesting designers in Belgrade, but is also keen on presenting the Norwegian design from Moods of Norway (random bilde av Aksel i Moods fra arktivet) What do you say guys? Peder, Simen and Stefan...let´s rock Belgrade with Moods?

Parallell with this project, Café de Concert is going to put together a festival each spring at the Kulturni Centar Beograda in collaboration with the talented organizer Ljubica Babec from the center. These two projects is meant to be the start of a monthly café de concert concert-series in Belgrade at both the culture-center and perhaps also at the very cool and trendy café of the philharmonic orchestra - where they so very original typed the names of all of the first musicians who played in the orchestra.


Aksel made so many contacts in Belgrade thank´s to Andrijana Radivojevic, Café de Concert is very greatful for that! Our serbian producer Andrijana Vuckovic will absolutely have no troubles in administrating all of the great possibilities Radivojevic has given and showed us in Belgrade. Aksel was also amazed when he was taken to a restaurant called Little Bay, which almost looked like a mini-version of La Scala. And when he first set his feet in the restaurant (moja stopala su velika)he was completely "sold" when he heard classical music over the stereo. Several evenings each week this wonderful place has classical and jazz musicians entertaining the guests - the only thing that made Aksel´s heart bleed was that the music was played as background music... I believe the owner of Little Bay could be expecting a call from a young man from Norway with a great vision for Little Bay in the future... Maybe in a year or two Little Bay will be called Café de Concert...

To the young Norwegian´s heartbeating joy, Aksel experienced that Telenor has a supercool flagship store in Belgarde and is one of the leading phone-companies in Serbia. Yes, Aksel now has a Serbian phonenumber contracted by Telenor! Now wouldn´t it be great if Telenor would be interested in collaborateing with Café de Concert in Belgrade in the future...Something tells us that Aksel will not only make a phone call to the owner of Little Bay...

Belgrade, with all of its historical treasures and loving heart, made Aksel so inspired that he wrote these two compositions in two days when he was practising in the Kulturni Centar Beograd and recorded them with his iPhone. Listen to the first two minutes of each. "Two playful butterflies in love" & "A butterfly longing for his love"

The history of Café de Concert

Café de Concert began a few days before the 19th of June 2003 when Aksel Kolstad together with a colleague performed live on Midt i Musikken, a classical music program on NRK radio P2. During the program, the trial concert was announced, to be held at Kastanjen restaurant on Bygdøy Allé in Oslo.
Read more...

Visit the old Café de Concert media centre HERE

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