Swiss wind orchestra to march down Liberty Boulevard on 18 October
The 100-strong band from Fribourg will also play with the Talas Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall, and the city has approved a four-hour road closure.
TALAS — A wind orchestra from the Swiss city of Fribourg, founded in 1804 and now about 100 musicians strong, will spend six days in Talas this month, beginning with a parade down Liberty Boulevard on Sunday 18 October.
Under a permit approved by Talas city council's transport committee on Wednesday, Liberty Boulevard will be closed to traffic from noon to 16:00 that day while the band marches from the Hall of Justice to the National Historical Museum of Irad on the central square. The committee's papers put the city's cost for policing, barriers and cleaning at IS 46,000. The Department of Public Information has issued the performance permit that foreign ensembles need to play in public.
The orchestra, the official wind band of its canton, will hold a workshop with students of the National Conservatory of Folk Music on 20 October and give a joint concert with the Talas Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall on 21 October. The programme pairs Swiss marches and alpine pieces with symphonic settings of episodes from the epic of Janyl, for which the Talas orchestra's brass section has been rehearsing new parts since August.
“An orchestra of our size has eight brass players. They are bringing nearly forty”Igor Melnyk, trombonist, Talas Symphony Orchestra
Saule Abdykalykova, director of the Talas Philharmonic Society, said the visit had been two years in the planning. "It is the first foreign orchestra of this size to play in the hall since before 2023," she said. "Ticket prices start at IS 60, and we have kept a block of seats for conservatory students at IS 10." The visit is paid for by a group of Swiss engineering and commodity firms with offices in Talas, with help from the tourism department of the Ministry of Economy, she said. Neither has published the amount.
Igor Melnyk, who has played trombone in the Talas orchestra for 26 years, said the brass players were looking forward to the company. "An orchestra of our size has eight brass players. They are bringing nearly forty," he said. "We will learn more in one rehearsal than in a season of recordings."
Not everyone on the boulevard is pleased about a Sunday closure. Farhod Yusupov, who runs a café near the museum, said the last parade closure, in March, cost him most of a day's takings because customers could not park. "Music is welcome. I would like the barriers to come down at four o'clock, as the permit says, and not at seven," he said. A spokesman for the mayor's office said the permit required the road to reopen by 16:00 and that traffic police would be told to keep to it.
The Philharmonic Hall, the round building of 1974 known as Tündük for its ribbed roof, was listed as a protected building in 2021. Tickets for the 21 October concert go on sale at the hall's box office on Monday.
Adapted for the Irad worldbuilding project from real reporting: 24.kg.