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"

Aksel had a succesful presentation of Café de Concert on the opening day of the Creative Incubator in Tallinn, Estonia. He was invited to Tallinn after the head of the Incubator in Tallinn, Anu Lõhmus, saw him do a Café de Concert-presentation in Berlin earlier this year. After the presentation Aksel played together wih the amazing violinist Kristina Kriit in the famous café in the old town in Tallinn called von Krahl Baar with lots of people and lots of fun!

The circus is closed. Everybody went home. The streets are empty, and Harlekin has nowhere to go, his home has closed for the night. He strolls up the narrow streets, looking through window glasses. The rooms are all dark, everybody is a sleep. In the very end of the street lies a little café nobody goes to. Only Harlekin knows of it. He opens the café-door. A small candle is lit on one of the tables, next to a painting of Mona Lisa.

Harlekin smiles with tears in his eyes when he sees it. Mona Lisa knows Harlekin well. She likes when he comes to visit late at night. Next to Mona Lisa is an old piano. Harlekin sits down next to the piano and looks at the music lying on it. It´s the Goldberg-variations by Bach. Harlekin starts to cry. So does Mona Lisa. Halrekin starts to play. Then he looks at Mona Lisa and plays Bach the way she likes it.

Listen to Aksel Kolstad: Harlekins variations
(Live from the Fredrikstad Café de Concert-festival 2009)

The traditional Fredrikstad CdC festival is being held at several concert venues throughout Fredrikstad these days. Since the opening concert on thursday, both young talents and established musicians have given café concerts in both traditional and untraditional venues. In high schools, intimate stages and cafés, we're trying to inspire and entertain our audience with a repertoire ranging from light classical music to contemporary music.

We're now half way through the festival, but a lot of great concerts are scheduled over the coming days. Worth mentioning is several concert with Fredrikstad Chamber Orchestra and a concert at Norways probably smallest venue - det konglelige norske humormuseum..

We hope to see you at the coming concerts and be sure to check out our festival site.

Feel free to check out the gallery in our media center.