No. 23: 4 - 7 July 2013

When the TFF Rudolstadt was officially extended to four days in 2011, the organizers worried at first how many visitors would accept this offer and arrive early on Thursday. Two years later and they worry more about the incoming stampede: Of the 20,000 limited season tickets, 15,000 were already exchanged on the first day of the festival: And, although the program mustered no artists who were known beyond the insider folk and world music audiences - such as Zaz or Dr. John as in previous years – the Heinepark reached its capacity limits. But Souad Massi, The Tiger Lillies and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros ensured for a pleasant evening and thus created a positive sentiment that carried through into the following days to such diverse artists as the Balanescu Quartet, Bauchklang, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Fat Freddy's Drop, Captain Peng & Die Tentakel von Delphi and David Lindley.

Altogether there were 87 soloists and groups from 38 countries in the stage program and 56 acts over almost 31 stages and podiums between the castle and park in the Street music section. The visitors came from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the Czech Republic. Italy was presented as the Country in Focus.

As last year, the series of concerts began after the festival opening in front of the guests of honor of the town. A one-day conference on Italian music was rounded off by a music program that showed many unknown facets of Italian music ranging between archaic traditions of Sardinia and multi-cultural projects from Naples. This was organized in cooperation with the Institute for Trans-cultural Studies of the Academy of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar.

For the first time, the usual program of professional dance ensemble was supplemented by a modern dance company: OPLAS from Umbria showed a dance-parable about the love for the music of Antonio Vivaldi, to a full, yet quiet as a mouse, market square at midnight.

TFF Rudolstadt together with participating festival broadcasters ARD and Competition Creole awarded the German World Music Award RUTH to the Cologne-based Ukrainian artist Mariana Sadovska (Grand prize), the Vietnamese-German Lao Xao trio from Dresden also won a prize, so too did the dance teacher Eva Sollich for a lifetime achievement.

For the first time the TFF team awarded its own prize to the Braunschweiger Jazzkantine for their current set of folk songs.

The Magic concerts focused around one instrument are always crowd pullers at the TFF. This time it was all about the oldest known instrument of mankind, the flute. With nine flutists from four continents and five accompanying musicians it was numerically the most elaborate Magic project to date- and musically one of the most satisfying: Even those who are not exactly among the flutes fans, frankly admitted that the musicians here were at a very high level and had delivered a superb joint concert.

135 accredited media ensured a positive external effect, including numerous live radio broadcasts, concert recordings and contributions by MDR Figaro, BR Klassik, Deutscher Welle, Deutschlandfunk, DeutschlandRadio Kultur, HR2 Culture, Radio Bremen and WDR3. For the first time also, two concerts (Bauchklang and Fat Freddy's Drop) were broadcast to the worldwide web via a live-stream video feed.