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31st Danube Island Festival kicks off Friday

Friday sees the start of the 31st annual Vienna Danube Island Festival (Donauinselfest). Over three million visitors are expected in the course of three days, making this one of the world's largest outdoor music festivals.

31st Danube Island Festival kicks off Friday
Photo: APA (Archiv/Punz)
For three days, the open-air spectacle will entertain its audience with some 2,000 artists and more than 600 hours of programming.
 
Highlights include performances by Panda rapper Cro, Milow, Macy Gray, Picture Book and Adel Tawil.
 
On Sunday, Conchita Wurst will honour the island as a 'surprise guest', fresh from the London Pride festival
 
Eleven stages and 19 theme 'islands' are planned for this year, ensuring there's something for every taste.  Entrance is free.
 
Included in the entertainment will be a 20 meter long slackline, for those who want to test their balancing skills.
 
A full complement of police and paramedics will be on duty, to ensure the event is problem free. Experienced medics recommend that festival-goers drink moderately and stay hydrated with water, as the weather will be hot.
 
Also the European ideals of ​​peace will not be neglected in the year of the World War One centenary – in addition to a peace message from Mayor Michael Häupl (SPÖ), the organizers plan to broadcast a portion of a memorial concert by the Vienna Philharmonic from Sarajevo. 
 
How many people flock to the 6.5 km long island this year, remains to be seen. Last year the 30th anniversary festival set a new record of 3.2 million visitors.
 
By way of comparison, the nearest contenders for the world's biggest music festivals are Summerfest in Wisconsin, USA, and Mawazine in Morocco, which each have a million visitors in around ten days.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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