After Dmitri Bashkirov’s enchanting concert last year we are curious to see whether it is true, as they say, that talent runs in families. This year his daughter, Elena Bashkirova is coming to Budapest. The pianist – the wife of Daniel Barenboim – is appearing together with excellent chamber music partners, all regular guests at the famous Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. And the creator and driving force behind the festival is none other than Elena Bashkirova.

Cecilia, also known as Cecily, was an early Christian virgin and martyr († around 230), from the late Middle Ages one of the fourteen helping saints. Her legendary life story was written in a popular style. She grew up as a Christian in the patrician pagan Caecilius family. She took a vow of virginity in her early youth. Despite this, her parents forced her into a betrothal with a young pagan called Valerius. On her wedding night Cecilia persuaded her husband not to touch her, saying: “I have a holy angel as a lover who preserves my body from all abominable sin, and if he learns that you approach me with abominable love, know that he will strike you dead at once…” Valerius was persuaded, and was even baptised. Later his “heavenly rival” appeared before them and crowned them with a wreath of roses and lilies (these flowers are sometimes Cecilia’s attributes). Smelling the miraculous perfume of the flowers, Valerius’s younger brother, Tiburtius also became a Christian. Not long afterwards, all three won the martyr’s crown. But first Cecilia converted the soldiers and their officers accompanying them. She wears three martyr’s crowns. After three days of unsuccessful attempts (suffocation in steam, boiling in hot oil), they tried to behead her The executioner struck her neck three times, but she survived and did not die for three days, during which she divided everything she had among the poor and ordered a church to be founded in her house.

The Blind Boys of Alabama are formed some six and a half decades ago.
They predate Elvis, Little Richard and Al Green yet even in their 70s they are still at the top of the gospel charts and have won an impressive four consecutive Grammy Awards over the past four years. In recent years, The Blind Boys have proven themselves masters of bringing out the most spiritual aspects of mainstream music, while at the same time bringing the music of the church straight to the
roadhouse.
The Blind Boys had spent more than 40 years working mostly in the traditional gospel circuit, since forming at the Alabama Institute for the Afro - American Blind in 1939.
Spirit of the Century was a triumph, a blend of gospel, blues, soul and folk that won the 2001 Grammy for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album.
In the past five years, they've recorded moving renditions of songs by everyone from Tom Waits to Prince, and appeared as guests on record and on stage with an equally diverse array of artists, from Peter Gabriel to Ben Harper.
As they've reached acclaim and commercial success in recent years, one thing has remained: The group's mission to do God's work in new and inspiring ways.

The Inda Gallery explores the question of the passage between life and art, space and time, reality and fantasy, the objective and the subjective way of seeing. The title is symbolical and has several meanings. Firstly, it suggests that art is capable (is it really capable?) of creating a bridge to provide a passage between different existing and imaginary worlds for which at times and, in fact ever more frequently, it seems we are unable to find an adequate verbal description. Art can also express recognised and unspeakable problems that we do not put into words. Art can speak in a “language”, the language of images that does not require translation and can therefore link different worlds.
All three artists participating in the exhibition live in big cities where they witness “meetings of worlds” every day. Stoyanov, Bulgarian by nationality, lives in Vienna; his photo and video works deal with the concept of identity, the extremely “narrow path” that traces the scope for action in the individual’s life, the living space. Now “in the period of unlimited possibilities” this space is steadily shrinking; even if we imagine that its real extent is vast we are in fact walking over a thin membrane. Eszter Csurka works in a variety of genres; she does not favour any one mode of expression over the others and is equally at home in the worlds of film, performance, theatre and painting. Lajos Csontó’s photographs and videos often acquire meaning together with the texts written on them. His works expand space and time and with this, the living space of both artist and viewer.
Do we still have living space? Is the world expanding or shrinking? Do we live in imaginary worlds? The artists participating, Lajos Csontó, Eszter Csurka and Kamen Stoyanov, answer these questions with their works.