As the highlight of this year’s Northern Lights Festival de Febrero, renowned Australian-born pianist David Fung will perform Saturday, February 27, at Ajijic’s acoustically remodeled Auditorio de la Ribera, joining distinguished conductor Mark Skazinetsky and a 19-member orchestra for Dimitri Shostakovich’s lush, technically demanding Piano Concerto No. 1 with Strings and Trumpet. 

Julian Rachlin, one of the world’s most renowned violinists, will grace the Northern Lights Festival de Febrero in Ajijc, which opens its 14th season on Saturday, February 20 and runs through March 5.  

The first show for the GALA open-air gallery wrapped around the Ajijic was inaugurated Saturday, February 6.

Violinist Benjamin Bowman and cellist Joel Noyes, among the most distinguished of the 27 musicians in this year’s Northern Lights Festival de Febrero, are set to arrive from New York in mid-February and be billeted in Ajijic homes for the duration of the series, which runs February 20 to March 5.

While the generous Cultura Jalisco grant has kept the Northern Lights Festival’s engine churning, there still remains a large shortfall that organizers hope can be recovered by further local donations, sponsors and partners and its enthusiastic group of festival members, devotees and music lovers.

Northern Lights, once thought only a visual spectacle, has become, for our lower latitudes, an enchanting sonorous one in the form of the Northern Lights Festival de Febrero.