For five days in Madalena, musicians from different countries and traditions transformed the 11th Cordas World Music Festival into a meeting place for plucked and bowed strings—where the Viola da Terra encountered Mozart and Schubert, Sephardic music, the Arabic oud, Spanish guitar and the unpredictable freedom of improvisation.

For five days, Pico became an island of strings. From October 1 to 5, the municipality of Madalena hosted the 11th edition of the Cordas World Music Festival, a celebration in which instruments became passports and music moved freely between centuries, countries and traditions. More than a succession of concerts, Festival Cordas once again proposed something increasingly precious: a place where musical cultures can encounter one another without surrendering the identities from which they come.

Azorean tradition remained at the heart of the program. Tuna de Cordas Ilha Negra opened the festival, while Orlando Martins gave his first solo concert at the Auditório da Madalena, placing the Viola da Terra at the center of his performance. Elsewhere, the repertoire traveled far beyond the archipelago. Quarteto Quadrivium performed classics by Mozart and Schubert, while Canadian musician Aaron Lightstone brought Sephardic music and the oud to Pico, singing in Hebrew, Ladino, Arabic and English in an intimate concert that revealed how a stringed instrument can carry centuries of migration, memory and cultural encounter.

The festival also created room for beginnings and transformations. At the Pico Wine Museum, Inês Ripamonti presented new music and announced that she will now perform under the artistic name Maria Inês. At Cella Bar, Daniela Dahmen Quintas and Miguel Camponez, performing as Duo Sea Strings, brought early music into the program, while young musician Daniel Ferro explored improvisation on two different guitars and the Viola da Terra.

One of the festival’s most emblematic moments came not from a predetermined score but from musicians listening to one another. A jam session brought together performers from Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Canada, allowing different musical languages to meet through improvisation. There, the festival’s philosophy became audible: culture was not simply being exhibited but exchanged, each musician entering with a particular tradition and leaving space for something new to emerge between them.

Spanish musician, navigator and luthier Hector Belda Om closed the festival, bringing yet another dimension to the relationship between travel and music. Belda builds guitars aboard his sailboat while navigating the world, and in Madalena he presented both his music and an exhibition of the instruments he creates—a particularly fitting presence on an island whose history has always been shaped by journeys across the sea.

Concerts were only part of the five-day gathering. School visits, cinema and conversations expanded the festival beyond the stage, while the exhibition “Cordas na Tela” continues throughout October at the Biblioteca Auditório da Madalena. The festival thus connected performance with education, visual art and conversation, reinforcing its role as a cultural meeting place rather than simply an annual concert series.

With 11 editions now completed, Festival Cordas will return from October 1 to 5, 2027, once again encompassing World Music Day, Viola da Terra Day and the October 5 holiday. The event is organized in partnership with the Municipality of Madalena, with support from Fundação INATEL, the Regional Directorate for Culture of the Government of the Azores, volunteers and local businesses. More information is available through the Festival Cordas official website.

What remained after these five days was more than music. On Pico, an Azorean viola could converse with an oud; Mozart could inhabit the same festival as Sephardic song; ancient music could precede an improvised encounter among musicians who did not need to share a country or even a language.

They needed only strings—and the willingness to listen.

Based on a Press Release from MiratecArts-The photos are from the same source.