Yasmin Levy Closes First Ekata Festival in Krnjevo

The first Ekata festival is heading for a finale you rarely see on the local circuit. The fourth and closing night, on Sunday, June 7, brings an exclusive concert by Yasmin Levy to the Ekata Estate in Krnjevo, the Israeli singer-songwriter who turned the Sephardic tradition into a sound recognised around the world.

The festival opened on June 3 and, across four days, brought music, theatre, contemporary art and cuisine together in one place. The third night, with a set from the band Prah, already showed that Krnjevo could be more than a dot you pass on the map. But it is the finale that pushed talk of Ekata well beyond the usual festival crowd.

The reason is simple: the number. The Ekata amphitheatre holds only 400 guests. That is not a planning oversight, it is the concept. Instead of a large stage and a sea of people, the organisers chose closeness, an evening where every note lands the way it was meant to. Yasmin Levy in front of 400 people is not the same as Yasmin Levy in front of several thousand, and that difference is exactly what gives the finale its weight.

Who is Yasmin Levy and why does she close the festival?

Yasmin Levy sings in Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews, and her voice carries a heritage that has travelled the Mediterranean for centuries. In her music the Sephardic tradition meets flamenco and a contemporary sensibility, so the audience gets something that sounds both old and entirely new at once. A repertoire like that needs a room that listens rather than one that drowns it out.

That is why the choice of closing act is no accident. A festival built around the idea of intimacy, around blending art forms and a carefully chosen programme, could hardly have found a better ending. Levy is not after spectacle in the usual sense, she is after the silence between songs, and an amphitheatre for 400 gives her exactly that.

What does Ekata mean for the local festival scene?

A festival’s first edition is always a test. It shows whether the idea holds up and whether audiences recognise what the organisers had in mind. Ekata chose not to compete on numbers but on experience, and if the finale goes as announced, that is a signal that the local scene has room for smaller, more curated formats too.

These days Krnjevo has landed on the map of people who follow serious music, and the Ekata Estate has a chance to become a recognised address. Tickets for the closing night are available through the tickets.rs platform, and given the capacity, seats are more limited than at any local festival this summer.

Would you rather have a festival of 400 people or a big stage with thousands of guests?