Lovers Tour

Balkan Season 2026

6 September, BANJA LUKA, Banski Dvor

8 September, RIJEKA, Export Drvo

10 September, NOVI SAD, Synagogue

6 October, PRISTINA, Palace of Youth and Sport

No Borders Orchestra

Conducted by Premil Petrovic

Directed by Brett Bailey

Program:

Julius Eastman: Gay Guerilla

Claude Debussy: Clair de Lune

Sara Glojnaric: #popfem

Gustav Mahler: Adagietto

Gavin Bryars: Jesus’ blood never failed me yet 

In a world marked by war, right-wing populism, deepening social inequality, human rights violations, and human-caused climate change, turning our attention to love might seem disarmingly simple. Yet, this apparent simplicity is precisely its power. At the root of our global crises is an absolute lack of care, empathy, compassion, relational responsibility, and the capacity to recognise the vulnerability of others.

In recent years, feminist, queer, and leftist thinkers and artists have therefore returned to terms such as radical tenderness, radical love, and revolutionary love. These concepts do not describe love as a private emotion alone; they understand it as an ethical and political force: a way of resisting fear, alienation, division, and othering.

The Lovers Tour approaches love not as an escape from the world, but as a driving force within it. We are choosing radical empathy over systemic apathy, solidarity, attention, a refusal of exclusion, and a commitment to the freedom of others. It encompasses romantic love, queer love, friendship, chosen family, self-love, and the fragile bonds through which people create belonging. Within society as a whole, these seemingly small, everyday actions are incredibly important, powerful, subversive, and transgressive toward the dominant system.

The freedom to love remains an unfinished political struggle. It concerns the universal recognition, protection, and inclusion of different forms of love, intimacy, and kinship. Against discrimination, hatred, and violence, the Lovers Tour insists on a simple ethical principle: when people find happiness, dignity, and connection with one another, what right does anyone have to deny them that freedom?

For the No Borders Orchestra, this question is not abstract. The concert itself becomes a laboratory for a kinder and more open society. Listening, breathing together, sharing time, and giving space to others are not only musical acts—they are social acts. In this sense, the Lovers understand the orchestra as a community in practice: a temporary public space in which difference is not erased, but held, heard, and transformed into collective energy; a space where people forge alliances across borders. Friendship as a way of being. Love as an active practice of liberation. Lovers as an embodiment of love.

The Lovers Tour therefore thematizes both the freedom of the individual act of love and love as a political force. It asks us to become more loving and to open up space for others. Love appears here not as a naive ideal, but as a disruptive and liberating practice of connection.

Real love creates a new world. A different, better world! Let’s start where transformation is the most realistic. Let’s start with ourselves!

Europasinfonie – Composers Competition