Music Day

Music Day - Fête de la musique is an international initiative of a one-day live music festival that dates back to 1982 in Paris. It is celebrated on 21 June, when the day is the longest and the night is the shortest, and it is the ideal opportunity for live music outdoors, in public venues. The festival includes both amateur and professional musicians of various genres. Slovenia joined the Music Day more than a decade ago.

A fifth of cultural events are concerts and other music-related events

In 2022, cultural institutions in Slovenia prepared 3,843 concerts of various musical genres. The largest share of the concerts is represented by choral and vocal music. If we add to the concerts the remaining musical and music-related events - opera and other musical events, ballet, modern dance and folklore activities - over 21% of all cultural events were on the stages of musical events. There were in total 5,187 music-related events, or on average 14 per day.

Concerts and other music-related events attended by 1.2 million visitors

Judging by the number of visitors to musical events, on average, popular music concerts are the most popular, followed by rock with urban music, concerts of choral music, and symphonic and chamber music. The remaining types of concerts and musical events recorded lower attendance, which is also related to the characteristics of each type of event - the number of visitors was the lowest at concerts of contemporary and composed music.

Popular music concerts with chanson had the largest average attendance per event (470), followed by ballet performances (438) and opera performances (422), while the smallest attendance was recorded at modern dance performances (84) and jazz and improvised music concerts (121).

 

New and Slovenian works

At concerts and other musical events in 2022, 3,887 new or newly studied works were presented, most of which (87.5%) were presented at concerts. The most new music-related works were for choral and vocal music (more than 25%), and the fewest for ballet performances (26 or 0.7%).

Among 5,428 works performed at music-related events, 1,835 were by Slovenian authors.

Music and dance festivals

Slovenian cultural institutions, i.e. houses of culture, theatres, music institutions and other producers, also organised music and dance festivals in 2022. There were 88 of them or around 47% of all festival events in the mentioned year. 

There were 2,399 events at these festivals, which was over 38% of all festival events. The remaining festival events were prepared within theatre, film and other festivals.

Educational programmes of cultural institutions

Some cultural institutions also offer educational events, seminars and workshops. In 1,070 such programmes (which is over 13% of all programmes), the emphasis was on music, dance or folklore activities, while 658 programmes were devoted exclusively to music.

About 125,700 people attended all music-related programmes, of whom slightly more than 88% were children and youth.

Professional musicians, dancers and teachers

At the end of 2022, the following were entered in the Statistical Register of Employment:

• 1,188 musicians, singers, composers (i.e. musicians)
• 263 dancers, choreographers (i.e. dancers)
• 1,119 music teachers in music schools, and private music teachers (i.e. music teachers).

Music institutions employed 471 people in 2022, most of them under a full-time contract (96%). More than 15% of employees were under the age of 35. However, external associates make a significant contribution to the artistic creation of music institutions - there were 1,594 of them, most of them self-employed professionals in culture.