20th anniversary Cayman Arts Festival ends in Camana Bay

Over the past two decades, Camana Bay provided venues for some of the most important Cayman Arts Festival performers, including piano prodigy Joey Alexander, classical guitarist superstar Alexandra Whittingham and award-winning flautist Nick Cartledge. It came as no surprise then when Camana Bay Cinema provided the venue for the eighth and final event of the 20th anniversary Cayman Arts Festival when Trio Balanas performed before a sell-out audience on 1 March.

The trio consists of talented Latvian sisters Margarita and Kristine Balanas, and their brother Roberts. Their programme consisted of solos, duets and trio performances of genres that ranged from classical to pop. Highlights from the two sisters, with Kristine playing violin and Margarita playing cello, included a sometimes-haunting violin and cello duet of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ “Castillo Interior” and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons: Winter.”

Not to be outdone by his sisters, Roberts – switching between a traditional violin and an electric violin – performed some of his own arrangements of pop songs like Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” and Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.”

The event was sponsored by Camana Bay tenants Royal Bank and RBC Wealth Management/RBC Dominion Securities, which offered a pre-concert cocktail reception to invited guests at Abacus Restaurant and Lounge.

20 years of entertainment and education
The Cayman Arts Festival was established in 2004 as a biennial series of mostly classical concerts. Over the past 20 years, it has expanded to offer other genres of music, including jazz, cabaret and even steel pan.

In addition to making the main festival an annual event every February, Cayman Arts Festival has added a monthly “Music at the Library” series, the Cayman Piano Festival every October and other, one-off events during the year, including several that feature the Cayman Youth Choir, the CAF Elite String Ensemble and the CAF Youth Camerata orchestra. Those three entities comprise the best singers and musicians that participate in Cayman Arts Festival’s various student education programmes.

“Music education for students in Cayman’s public schools has always been part of our core mission,” says Cayman Arts Festival Executive Director Marius Gaina. “In addition to our after-school music education programme, our visiting performers offer master classes at the schools or collaborative performances with student musicians while they are here. We also nurture our most gifted students by providing one-on-one tutors or by sending them to music camps overseas, like the one in Lake Luzerne, New York.”

This article was published in the April 2024 print edition of Camana bay Times.