No. 9: 2-4 July 1999

For the ‘99 Festival we went back to our roots because the weather was almost as hot as the beginning of the 90s again. The spectators came in droves to the city - for the festival alone on Saturday over 13,000 day tickets were sold. Returning to our roots we suspended the Country in Focus and this years festival was part of the cultural program of the European City of Culture, Weimar. We ran the project "9 from 2000 ' similar to the nine European Cities of Culture the following year: Avignon (FRA), Bergen (NOR), Bologna (ITA), Brussels (BEL), Helsinki (FIN), Krakow ( POL), Prague (CZE), Reykjavik (ISL) and Santiago de Compostela (ESP). Host, conductor, arranger and composer of interludes was Christoph Theusner (Bayon) from Weimar. Magic instrument was the Harmonica, there was the Folk Award winning Robert Zollitsch with Duo Nassler & Schneider and the Blauen Einhorn. The group Leyoad brought us the music of the Saharawi people, long before their main singer Mariem Hassan became a solo singer, there was the wild fiddling of Natalie MacMaster from Kanda's Cape Breton, the Fairy Tale Trio thrilled with Bulgarian ethno jazz and the Korean dance ensemble with its fine floating Quest performance.

The best hours of the world were between last Friday and Sunday in Rudolstadt. (Thoralf Lange, Frankenpost)

In that idyllic spot, Thuringia has somewhat succeeded in doing what others can only dream - the mixture of people and Folk. (Hagen Kunze, Leipzig People's Daily, 6.7.1999)

No Rock Festival can muster the diversity of sound that guarantees the three-day Rudolstädter Folk Festival. (Frauke Adrian, Thüringer Allgemeine)

As always I like to listen to folk and world music from a theoretical perspective - the best thing that happens in this country is the Rudolstädter Festival. (Hendrik Lasch, New Germany)