The Halfway Festival in Poland

Bialystok is a lovely town which has a stunning Opera House. It was in the gardens of this
opera house, in a modern amphitheater (usually used for opera) where we performed on June the 24th this year.

This is the first time Ilya have played live in 13 years! We had a stripped back 4-piece band with Ruth Hammond (Ruth played keys and bv's in the original band during the Virgin days) and Matt Jones who has played drums with us on our last 3 albums.

We had requests from the organisers to play some songs from our debut album, They Died For Beauty. So our songs like Bellissimo, Bliss and They Died For Beauty were re-arranged to replace the string and horn arrangements with vocal harmonies. A challenge that worked - thank god!

We went on stage at 12.30 am and played to a fabulous audience until nearly 2am. By the time we got to the encores we had the entire audience up and dancing and singing along with us.
It was a fabulous 3 days - amazing venue, very well run by the generous and lovely organisers.
We very much hope this is the beginning of Ilya live!

Photo by M.Heller

Photo by M.Heller

Photo by Cykady.com

Photo by M.Heller

Photo by M.Heller

Photo by M.Heller

Matt chooses drink to compliment auburn beard.

Voluptuous views.

The entrance area of Opera Filharmonia Podlaska.

Refection's in window.

Soundcheck

Ilya were assigned 2 lovely Karolinas to help them.

Lost in translation.

Finding the dressing room could take days!

But once in the dressing room ........

Almost ready to go on stage at 12.30 am.

A portion of our audience.

The 2 faces of Madame Butterfly