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Sophia Chese-Msowa Arts Correspondent
The much awaited Harare International Festival of the Arts is set to begin today with the Cabs Classical Music Celebration at St Georges College. This year’s edition has a different and stretched programme and beginning today the festival will have separate events until the end of the year. The Cabs Classical Music Weekend is starting at 11am with a performance from Prince Edward Marimba band which is going to be a free show.

There is going to be a series of workshop during the day fused with music from the Prince Edward Marimba band. Tomorrow’s programme will see a number of artistic workshops taking place combined with classical music from Harare Philharmonic Orchestra, Zimspiration and Baroque 2000 instrumentalists. The programme continues to Sunday when the Johannesburg based Urban Strings is set to perform. Mellow Moods will wrap up the music classical weekend.

Hifa spokesperson Tafadzwa Simba said this year’s edition is going to be an exciting one since it will incorporate a number of events including sports.

“Hifa is starting this weekend and it will run up to the end of the year and we have a number of events lined up till the year end,” he said.

He highlighted that they have added some new activities that were not traditionally associated with the festival to cater for different people but reiterated that in every event there will be an aspect of arts.

“We have added sporting activities on this year’s edition of Hifa but we are going to have an arts aspect in every event,” he said. This year’s events will include a theatre season, parkade party, rugby exhibition match, car racing demonstration and many other events to be hosted in different venues.

There will be a fashion, hair and beauty show in November with an anti-poaching and environmental conservation conference wrapping up the programme in December.