Welcome to a new and exciting adventure in the heart of our land!

It is an immense honor for me, as a Riojan and as a musician, to welcome you to the 5th edition of La Rioja Festival. This year is not just another edition; it is an invitation to live an experience that changes us from within. Under the theme "Crucible," we want the festival to be a space of transformation where music and heritage blend to forge a renewed, deeper, and more human sense of identity within us.

Music has the power to melt away our differences and transform us. Just like in a crucible, where elements are mixed to create something new and valuable, in this festival we will come together through the beauty of sounds and the magic of our landscapes.

I invite you to join us on this journey with a musical map that is a gift for the soul, traveling through the most emblematic corners of our geography:
We will open on Thursday, May 14th, with the lyrical emotion of La Carroza del Real at the Plaza del Mercado in Logroño. We will allow ourselves to be enveloped by the Cuarteto Quiroga and baritone José Antonio López in Casalarreina, and we will travel back to our roots with the lute of José Miguel Moreno at the Monastery of Yuso.

I will have the privilege of meeting you on the Riojaforum stage on Saturday the 16th, and we will experience moments of pure poetry with Sara Águeda and our beloved Pepe Viyuela in Viniegra de Abajo. The avant-garde style of Pacho Flores and Jesús ‘Pingüino’ González at the Würth Museum, the delicacy of the four-hand piano in Alfaro by Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung, and the celestial voices of the VOCES8 Scholars at the Monastery of Valvanera will prepare us for a historic milestone: welcoming maestro Plácido Domingo alongside ADDA Simfònica on Saturday the 23rd in Logroño.

We will close this circle of transformation on Sunday the 24th in Enciso, where I will have the joy of premiering the work ‘Itinerante’ by our composer-in-residence, Andrea Casarrubios, with the Agarita quartet, celebrating that we are part of something greater.

Dear family, La Rioja Festival is your home. Come and share this "Crucible" of emotions, rediscover who we are, and celebrate life through music.
With all my affection and enthusiasm,

Pablo Sainz-Villegas
Artistic Director of La Rioja Festival