Generous gift to the festival
Koster Chamber Music Festival’s first concert of the year was actually already on May 23. The concert grand piano recently donated to the festival was then introduced, first at a ceremony in Strömstad’s northern port and later at Longagärde, south Koster.
Pianist Mikael Holmlund played with the lid open on the quayside, with the port basin in Strömstad and later Koster strait as the background. Festival spokesman Thomas Flodin had first carefully baptised the shiny instrument in the wine and gave it the name “Elvis”.
A gift of this size means an awful lot for both the festival and Koster islands. We are so proud, and also so filled with anticipation as if we were small children before the premiere concert. Elvis on stage in Koster’s gardens, beautiful! Thomas says with a smile.
The donation is according to Jan Palmblad, Minister of Culture and Information in Strömstad, one of the most generous in the municipality’s history, and he hopes that others will be inspired by the donation. The donor is living on Koster but would otherwise remain anonymous. The gift – a Shigeru V Grand Chamber – is carefully made by hand in Japan. The grand piano’s main material is wood from the “Ezo” tree that grows in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, and both the wood as the solve parts of the piano is especially suited to cope with big fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Something that is necessary for an instrument of this caliber to be resident at the Koster Islands.
The grand piano “Elvis” will in the future be available for other music performers and arrangers at Koster, but it is still unclear where on the islands its winter residence becomes.
