The Waves Vienna organizers are happy to announce the two Waves Vienna guest countries for 2013. True to the motto East meets West, Waves Vienna welcomes Slovenia and Belgium as this year’s representatives of Eastern and Western Europe.
Waves Vienna have set up collaborations with local key institutions from these two focus countries and are proud to collaborate with the Slovenian Music Information Center (SIGIC), based in Ljubljana, as well as with the Flanders Music Center and Wallonie-Bruxelles Musique, both based in Brussels.
The collaboration with these institutions includes presenting not only a selection of the finest up-and-coming artists from Belgium and Slovenia but also extensive information about the guest countries’ music sectors in several panels at the Waves Music Conference. Acts to perform at Waves Vienna and panel topics will be announced at the press conference in June.
Prior to Waves Vienna, which will be held from 3rd to 6th of October 2013, Waves Vienna will host a networking session for Austrian and Slovenian music professionals together with the Austrian Music Export (AME) at the Slovenian Music Week (STG) on February, 8th in Ljubljana. The date and location for the networking event in Belgium will be announced later this year.
Quotes from partners about the collaboration with Waves Vienna:
“Connections between the two neighbours – Slovenia and Austria – have always been tight. Not only we share common history and lifestyle, but we also vividly exchange cultural good, artists, and not the least regular tourists and shoppers. But how well do we really know each other? Waves Vienna’s focus on Slovenia in 2013 is going to be an unique opportunity to really get to know each other and discover each other’s music and market. It will help to establish sustainable networks between the musicians and music professionals and encourage exchange of musical talent as well as cultural trade between our two countries.”
Barbara Švrljuga, Slovenian Music Information Center“Spawning in a quite small national market, belgian artists always had a history of going abroad to develop their career. France, Netherlands and the UK have long been favorite playgrounds, and remain really important for our bands, labels and bookers. Austria, with Germany, shares one of our national languages, and seems like a quite natural region to extend our comfort zone in 2013. We are excited to see how we can achieve this as a host country at Waves Vienna. The connection with central-european countries represents an incredible opportunity for us to extend our networks even beyond that, build new connections, share music and meet people.”
Stef Coninx, Flanders Music Centre & Patrick Printz, Wallonie-Bruxelles Musique
Links:
www.wavesvienna.com
www.sigic.si
www.stg.si
www.wbm.be
www.muziekcentrum.be