Music fest 'Shake the Lake' hit Beijing

Richie Loidl. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Classical pianist Richie Loidl lives and grew up in the Salzkammergut region in Austria, close to the city of Salzburg. This region is visited by many tourists every year because of its picturesque landscape of lakes and mountains. It is also known as the place where great composers like Mozart, Brahms, Mahler spent summer.

Educated in classical music, Loidl came in contact with Boogie Woogie and Blues, a musical genre, which was originally played in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s and was reanimated by Hamburg and Vienna pianists at that time.

In 1995, Loidl, along with his musician friends, organized the first "Night of Boogie Woogie", which was a great success. Since then, with lots of ideas and creative inputs collected, the pianist expanded the music festival into "a combination of authentic boogie & jazz music feeling with professional lakeside holiday services and lifestyle", which is called Shake the Lake.

Decades later, Shake the Lake International Music Festival has evolved into the largest and one of the most authentic European boogie-woogie festivals.

Loidl brought this music extravaganza to Beijing for the first time on Sept 16 and 17 at the Kempinski's Yanqi Hotel nearby the Yanqi Lake.