Baltic Crossing

Baltic Crossing was the first folk music band ever to be part of ECHO’s ”Rising Stars program”! Rising Stars want to promote young European musicians every season. Every year maximum 6 Rising Stars are selected. Non-calssical musicstyles stay an excemption. It was accepted that jazz or other styles can occasionally be proposed. But the artistic comty suggests that it will stay an excemption and that a formula might be 5+1 or 6+1. BALTIC CROSSING’s ECHO tour 2010/11: December 15th, Athens Concert Hall, Greece January 12th, Cité de la musique, Paris, France January 13th, Philharmonie / Salle de Musique de chambre, Luxembourg February 3rd, L'Auditori Chamber Music Hall, Barcelona, Spain March 13th, Bozar Salle Henry Le Boeuf, Brussells, Belgium March 16th Concertgebouw, Kleine Zaal, Amsterdam, Netherlands April 1st, Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden April 30th, Laeiszhalle / Musikhalle, Hamburg, Germany May 2nd, Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria May 19th, Birmingham Town Hall, UK May 22nd, The Sage Gateshead, UK The Rising Stars Programme exists since 1997. It was for all these years the most successful and continued initiative of ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation). The programme tries to give an answer to the complex problems for younger artists to access the highest standard Concert Halls in Europe and to find an attentive audience: Many local artists have the qualitative potential to aim for a larger audience but are not detected by foreign concert halls and do not achieve the interest of an international programmer. On the new CD ”Firetour”, The 5 musicians in Baltic Crossing, Esko Järvelä, Antti Järvelä, Andy May, Ian Stephenson and Kristian Bugge, plays a collection of folk music from the Danish Islands, Lolland and Falster. There is music from 18th century manuscripts of Bast, Ålholm and Reventlow and music from various 19th century collections like those of the Adrian family (Hillestrup, Falster), Niels Christian Andreasen (Sandby, Western Lolland), and Hans Hansen (Toreby, Eastern Lolland). And last but not least, the CD includes a new composition, a polska tune by Frede Nielsen from Flintinge, Lolland. Like the band’s two first CDs, ”The Tune Machine” is also released by GO Danish Folk Music (www.gofolk.dk) and is avaliable online via www.folkshop.dk, Itunes ect… - follow the updated calendar on www.balticcrossing.com ALBUM OF THE MONTH on BBC Radio 3's World on Three, July 2015 The Tune Machine "This is an album like none other you’ve ever heard before.."

Their fourth album "carry on crossing" came out in 2019.