The happenings of the fourth “Soundquest” RegiON live club concert festival will take place between 2 and 4 October in Budapest and four other large towns. Since 2008 the event has been sponsored by leading Hungarian telecommunications service provider Vodafone Hungary Ltd. and this year will be the first in which the Palace of Arts – as a main professional partner – will provide the venue for the gala opening ceremony. This year’s guest-of-honour nation is Iceland. The organisers have invited two Icelandic performers who have not yet performed in Hungary, although their music has already taken the world by storm. The Guardian has hailed Hjaltalín as the next Sígur Ros, and now we too have an opportunity to verify this claim. Songstress Emiliana Torrini, who was nominated for a Grammy for co-writing Kylie Minogue’s song Slow, has performed with her band at such prestigious European events and venues as the Glastonbury Festival, the London Royal Festival Hall and the Stockholm Jazz Festival. Her enigmatic voice may also be familiar from Gollum’s Song, heard at the end of the second part of Peter Jackson’s film The Lord of the Rings; while her last album, Me and Armini, has already achieved success in Hungary, with its MySpace page receiving more than 1.5 million hits to date. The Hungarian music scene is represented by the internationally renowned The Unbending Trees, who also got their first break at the “Soundquest” RegiON live festival. It was after appearing at this event that they found a UK publisher and management. (Further information: www.hangfoglalas.hu, www.regionlive.eu)

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