In March 2023 we launched our new name, Fairplay Chamber Music, to take our festival into the future!
When we founded our festival in 2017, under the name Järna Festival Academy, we were clear about what we wanted to create:
- a chamber music festival and a summer academy with the right conditions to achieve the highest possible artistic quality, both for students and visiting artists.
- a progressive festival driven by modern values such as climate, environment and gender equality.
- a venue in which the artistic content acts as a positive force for man and society, using music, art and science to contribute to the deepening and discussion of the topics that define our time.
In the years that have passed since then, the scope and design of the festival has been under constant change, partly because of the pandemic, but also because we do not want to get stuck in old wheel tracks and instead be able to act on new ideas and conditions. At the same time, our work in sustainability has developed constantly and has increasingly come to define our work and efforts. Our sustainability work is not only at the forefront but has also become something that other actors want our help in implementing.
One example of this is the EU-funded project Songs of Travel, which we will implement in 2024 together with three other international festivals and a computer game developer. We have been invited to this project precisely to create a climate policy that other festivals can take part in and that facilitates their own planning. Of course, this policy must be based on research, which is why it is being developed in collaboration with the renowned University of Galway, Ireland.
Now that our sustainability work has become so widespread and is also something that we ourselves are proud of, we have found it a shame that it is not reflected in our name at all. In fact, the name Järna Festival Academy does not say much about anything at all except that it is a festival in Järna. But we want to be so much more than that!
We want to be:
- Sustainable and have sound values: Fair
- Playful and unexpected: Play
- Internationally relevant in Chamber Music
Based on these ambitions, the name Fairplay Chamber Music is both natural and self-explanatory.
Our ambitions will also manifest themselves in various ways in this year’s festival program where we want play and seriousness to be accommodated side by side in a festival program that both challenges and entertains. Of course, we also target families with both children’s and brunch concerts and even the body can be stimulated, partly in the event Yoga med Bach but not least at Running for Beethoven which makes a comeback this year!
All this is possible because both public and private organizations and institutions have chosen to support us and thereby make our activities possible. After seven years, we are now changing our name to Fairplay Chamber Music. This means that we are here to stay and to continue to experience unique and meaningful artistic encounters together with our musicians, students and our dear audience!
-Peter Friis Johansson & Jakob Koranyi
Artistic Directors of Fairplay Chamber Music