International Recorder Ensemble Competition 2022 cancelled!

It is with a heavy heart that we, as the organisers and financially responsible parties, see ourselves forced to pause the preparations and staging of the festival until such time as an international cultural event of this magnitude can take place again. The latest developments of the Covid-19 pandemic force us to take this step.

As the organiser and financially responsible party of the iREC festival, we are currently facing difficult questions. The current pandemic developments hit us exactly at a time when the team for the preparations of the 2022 festival should be recruited and the planning should start. But: what to do if no one can travel? When it is not possible to make music in large groups? When many seats in the halls have to remain unfilled?

After we had to cancel the 2020 festival in advance with a heavy heart due to a lack of funding – and from today’s perspective we know that COVID-19 would have made it impossible to hold the festival anyway – we have been forced to make a fundamental decision in recent weeks and, after intensive consideration, have come to the following conclusion: events whose course we can determine ourselves to a certain extent and whose outcome is at least 50% calculable, we want to – continue to and absolutely – hold. However, in our view, an international festival with several thousand participants and visitors cannot be planned seriously and responsibly in these times. iREC thrives on international guests and the opportunity to travel, meet and make music together in large groups.

Since these possibilities are not given at the moment and the further development of the pandemic cannot be predicted at the moment, we hereby officially cancel iREC 2022. The festival thus goes into a CoVid hiatus.

However, we still firmly believe in the important signal effect of the festival. That we are not alone in this, we feel from the many feedbacks that have reached us.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Simon Borutzki, the artistic director of iREC, for his tireless commitment and his creative ideas to create a new festival for the recorder together with us.

As soon as the framework conditions set by COVID-19 allow it, we will resume planning for the iREC festival with great anticipation.

With cordial regards,

Silke “Katze” and jo Kunath