Holidays in Singapore: Singapore Arts Festival

From 13 May to 5 June Singapore will host the annual art festival.

Singapore Arts Festival is one of the largest and most important international festivals in Asia. Singapore Arts Festival differs from the huge number of similar events around the world by bold innovative approach to collaboration between artists from different countries and cultures, as well as synthesis of different directions of all performing arts. Such as old Lebanese poetry put on classical works by Bach and Vivaldi, or performance of traditional Indian dance to a jazz accompaniment. Very often musical works are performed in conjunction with the fantastic combinations of sound, light, and text.

For the first time Singapore Arts Festival was organized by the National Council for Arts in 1977. And just after few years it changed the world of Asian art and turned Singapore into one of the major cultural capitals of Asia. Just last year festival in Singapore presented the audience more than 5000 artists from 30 countries. All performances and shows were made with Asian sweep and brilliance, fantastic street parades, light acoustic show and fireworks.

Singapore Arts Festival is held in Esplanade Park located in the central district of Singapore. Here are held open-air performances and shows, requiring large open space. Here is also located Esplanade theatre (in the shape of the local fruit called durian), a unique building built on 8 hectares of land. Because of its shape and mobility of an acoustic curtain the main concert hall of the Esplanade theater has excellent acoustics, worldwide there are only five such halls. The organ of the theater includes 61 installations and 4,740 pipes. It was specifically designed by Johannes Klais Orgelbau, the most famous company in the world producing organs.

According to most critics, Singapore Arts Festival is an international exhibition of ideas, combining art in all its manifestations.