Tamila Kharambura sees music as a language without barriers—one capable of bringing international artists to island communities, opening classical music to new audiences, and giving young Azorean musicians horizons beyond geography

There are islands born from fire, and perhaps it is fitting that music created among them should also possess something volcanic: pressure becoming energy, silence becoming sound, the hidden depths of the earth suddenly finding a voice.

That image lies at the heart of the 2026 Hortênsia Music Festival, taking place in Angra do Heroísmo from September 1 to 10. Under the evocative theme “Musical Eruption,” this year’s festival draws inspiration from the elemental forces that created the Azores themselves. But for festival director Tamila Kharambura, eruption is more than metaphor. It describes music’s extraordinary ability to renew itself—and a cultural project determined to overcome the barriers of geography, economics and familiarity.

“Musical Eruption is born from the very identity of the Azores,” Kharambura explains, “from a territory shaped by natural forces, where creation and transformation are part of the landscape and history of the islands.”

Music, she argues, follows a similar law of perpetual rebirth. A composition may survive centuries and yet never truly repeat itself. Each performer enters it differently; each room changes its resonance; each audience hears it through the accumulated experiences of another time. The score remains, but the encounter is always new.

That philosophy extends to one of the festival’s most important principles: all public events are free of charge.

For Kharambura, accessibility is not peripheral to artistic excellence; it is part of its purpose. Classical music should not become the possession of those already initiated into its traditions, nor should attending a concert require specialized knowledge. One need not understand the architecture of a sonata or the intricacies of harmony to be moved by music.

Over successive editions, the festival has watched audiences grow. Some return faithfully each year; others are entering this musical world for the first time. Concerts designed for children provide interactive introductions to classical music, while performances at the Santa Casa da Misericórdia bring musicians directly to people who may be unable to attend conventional concert venues.

“The music must be accessible to everyone,” Kharambura says. It is perhaps the simplest sentence in the interview—and the one containing the festival’s deepest philosophy.

Making the Islands Part of the International Stage

The festival’s ambitions reach beyond presenting concerts. At its heart is also an argument against the cultural inequality created by geography.

Major international performers naturally gravitate toward metropolitan centers and established cultural circuits. Islands can therefore find themselves doubly distant: separated by ocean and by the economics of artistic touring.

The Hortênsia Music Festival attempts to reverse that journey. Instead of requiring island audiences to travel toward the great cultural centers, it brings distinguished musicians to the islands.

The 2026 edition gathers artists from different countries, generations and musical traditions. Returning performers include pianists Anna Ulaieva, Matan Porat and Iryna Brazhnik, together with brothers Hrachya and Sevak Avanesyan. Musicians making their first festival appearances in the Azores include cellists Kyril Zlotnikov and Shenghan Gao, violinists Jack Liebeck and Maria-Elisabeth Lott, violist Hiyoli Togawa, and internationally acclaimed Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg.

Stagg’s participation on September 6 and 8 will mark another milestone: the first inclusion of vocal performance in the festival’s history.

Yet perhaps the most enduring encounters will happen beyond the concert stage.

Through masterclasses, individual instruction, chamber-music work and student performances, young Azorean musicians will work directly with visiting artists. The objective is not simply technical improvement. It is exposure—to another interpretation, another musical tradition, another possible future.

For a young musician growing up on an island, meeting an internationally established performer can quietly alter the geography of possibility. Suddenly the world is not quite so distant.

A World Premiere in Angra

The festival will also place the Azores within contemporary Portuguese musical creation through the world premiere of António Pinho Vargas’s Piano Quartet No. 2 (Heimat), commissioned specifically by the Hortênsia Music Festival.

For Kharambura, presenting the established chamber repertoire is only part of a festival’s responsibility. Cultural institutions must also participate in the creation of what will become tomorrow’s repertoire.

Pinho Vargas, one of the central figures of contemporary Portuguese music, will be present in Angra. On September 1 at 11 a.m., the Public Library will host a lecture-recital offering audiences insight into his creative process. The new quartet receives its world premiere the following day.

There is particular resonance in the work’s title: Heimat—a German word whose meaning reaches beyond “home” toward homeland, belonging, origin and the intimate geography in which identity recognizes itself.

And perhaps there could hardly be a more appropriate place for such a work to enter the world than the Azores, islands where belonging has always existed in conversation with distance.

What We Invest in Culture Outlives Us

Kharambura herself embodies something of this movement between departure and return. Her professional life has taken her through Lisbon, Vienna, Amsterdam, and now Aachen, Germany, yet she continues returning to Angra to build the festival.

Looking at Terceira from abroad has strengthened rather than diminished her conviction that the island possesses a vibrant cultural life, created through the patient work of musicians, teachers and cultural professionals.

But culture, she insists, does not sustain itself automatically.

“A strong cultural life does not arise by chance,” she observes. It requires investment, conditions in which artists can work, opportunities through which young people can grow, and meaningful public access to art.

The sentence reaches beyond the festival. Culture is sometimes treated as decoration—as something societies finance after the supposedly essential matters have been resolved. Kharambura proposes another understanding. Culture is part of a community’s infrastructure. It teaches people to listen, imagine, encounter difference, and recognize beauty. Its consequences cannot always be measured at the conclusion of a concert or within the accounting of a single year.

“What we invest today in culture,” she reminds us, “has consequences far beyond the present.” That may ultimately be the most important meaning of this year’s Musical Eruption. The volcano gives an island its physical geography. Culture gives a community its interior geography.

And between September 1 and 10, in Angra do Heroísmo, musicians will arrive from distant places, young students will encounter new masters, audiences will hear unfamiliar works, and a composition never before heard anywhere in the world will sound for the first time in the middle of the Atlantic.

For a few September evenings, the distance between an island and the world will become almost immeasurable. Not because the ocean has grown smaller. But because music has crossed it.

Based on an interview in Diário Insular-José Lourenço, director. Phots from DI.