The music of Latvia will be the focus of the sixth annual folkBALTICA festival set April 21-25 in Flensburg, Germany, according to concert promoters.

Among the performers will be the drum-and-bagpipe band Auļi, the jazz-folk group Patina, and the Latgallian folk group Ceiruleits. Former Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga will present a lecture, “The Sun in Latvian Mythology,” on April 24.

The festival, set in the Schleswig-Holstein region of northern Germany, will include music and dance, exhibitions, lectures, workshops and films, according to the folkbaltica.de Web site. An estimated 85 performers will be on the program, 35 of them from Latvia.

The Latvians are scheduled to present 17 concerts, three workshops, two exhibitions, two lectures and a dance party.

“Never before has the enormous variety and vitality of Latvian traditions been shown on this scale in Germany,” festival Artistic Director Jens-Peter Müller said in a press release.

Also on the program are young folk artists Laima Jansone, Kristīna Šibina and Liene Igaune. Jansone and Šibina play the kokles and sing, while Igaune is a violinst and vocalist.

Multinstrumentalist and ethnomusicologist Valdis Muktupāvels is scheduled for eight performances.

The Trio Šmite, Kārkle & Cinkuss will have six performances. The trio includes vocalist Zane Šmite, vocalist and violinist Kristīne Kārkle Puriņa, and percussionist and vocalist Ivars Cinkuss. Šmite has previously performed with the post-folklore band Iļģi, Kārkle Puriņa is known for her work with Ceiruleits, and Cinkuss is a respected choir director.

The festival finale on April 25 will include performance of “Es arī,” a crossover performance by The Shin & Owl’s Ethnographic Orchestra. The effort combines Latvian composer Valts Pūce, as well as Šmite and Kārkle Puriņa, with the Georgian folk band The Shin.

Other performers in the festival will come from Estonia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany.

Further details about the festival, including ticket information, are available on the festival Web site, folkbaltica.de.

Flights to and from Rīga International Airport are among those in Europe that have been canceled because of a volcano in Iceland that is spewing ash into the atmosphere.

In an announcement on the airport’s Web site, officials said that all flights from midnight to 6 p.m. on April 16 have been canceled. Latvia’s airBaltic canceled flights to numerous destinations April 15 and 16, including Helsinki, Oslo, Brussels, Copenhagen, Tallinn, Hamburg, Stockholm and other locations.

Flight cancellations began April 15 in the United Kingdom as the ash spread southeast from Iceland. The National Air Traffic Services said flight restrictions will remain in place until at least 7 p.m. April 16 U.K. time. Some flights may be allowed, depending on meteorological forecasts.

“In general, the situation cannot be said to be improving with any certainty as the forecast affected area appears to be closing in from east to west,” NATS announced on its Web site.

Similarly, flight operations over Sweden were shut down April 15, including the flagship Stockholm Arlanda Airport.

“The forecast is that the situation will be the same during Friday (April 16),” airport officials announced on the airport’s Web site. “Most likely there will be very large disturbances in air traffic then as well.”

The ash is from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in south Iceland. The eruption began on March 20, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office. After quieting for a few days, activity at the volcano started again April 14, sending a plume of smoke and ash at least 8 kilometers into the air.

Jet stream winds have carried the ash southeast to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where aviation officials are concerned about damage the ash could do the aircraft engines. However, the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre said the ash should not be a health concern.

Latvia’s economic outlook is showing signs of improvement, leading Moody’s Investors Service to nudge up its rating of the country’s creditworthiness.

Noting that Latvia’s economy has stabilized and that financial stress has been reduced, the ratings service on March 31 revised its rating of Baa3 to stable from negative, according to a press release issued by Moody’s London office. Baa3 is the lowest investment grade ranking, just above “junk” status.

“The worst of the recession has passed, and the fledgling recovery should support the government’s financial strength and the banking sector in future,” Kenneth Orchard, vice president and senior credit officer in Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, said. “In addition, the prospect of a disorderly currency devaluation is now highly unlikely, reducing the country’s susceptibility to event risk from ‘high’ to ‘medium’ according to Moody’s sovereign rating methodology.”

Moody’s is among rating services whose opinions can affect investors’ views of a country’s financial condition. Others include Standard and Poor’s as well as Fitch Ratings.

“Reducing the private sector debt burden and enhancing international competitiveness are key to returning the economy to a sustainable growth path,” Orchard said. While the Latvian economy is expected to begin growing in the second half of this year, Moody’s noted that a sharp rebound is not expected and that “it will take several years for the economy to recover from the bursting of the property bubble and subsequent financial crisis.”

Einars Repše, Latvia’s finance minister, reacted favorably to the improvement in Moody’s rating. It shows the Latvian government’s measures to overcome the economic crisis have been recognized, Repše said in a press release.

“This rating is a significant signal to foreign investors and to the whole international community,” Repše said, “that also validates Latvia’s accomplishments in overcoming the economic crisis.”