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Printemps musical des Alizés, Essaouira. (Last weekend of April) For more information try http://www.alizesfestival.com or http://www.essaouiranetcom. (Updating of the official website is slow.) Essaouira is something of a melomane’s town. The Alizés spring music festival focuses on chamber music. Set up by the Association Essaouira-Mogador and royal advisor André Azoulay, the festival is named for the trade winds which blow in from the Atlantic. Events are held in Dar Souiri on the Rue du Caire, just off the Bab Marrakech square, and in the town’s Catholic church. Recent guest musicians have included Korean violonist Dong Suk Kang and Palestinian pianist Salem Abboud. Note that a festival of traditional Moroccan urban music, a ‘Festival des Andalousies’ is projected for Essaouira, turning it into the ‘town of the three musical festivals’. This fits nicely with a line of official rhetoric which insists on Morocco being a terre de tolérance, where each of the three great monotheistic religions have (or have had) their place.
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