played duets with operatic lyric tenor Luciano Pavarotti (a native of Modena) and Canadian rock balladeer Bryan Adams. After conducting tours and open-air shows in Europe and the United States, in 1995 he played in Latin America for the first time. 1995–97 saw Vollenweider playing a series of shows in remarkable locations: a tour of Polish castles, a show with Italian singer/songwriter Zucchero at the 2500 m high location (at -8° Celsius) of Brunico in the Southern Alps, and in a giant volcanic cave at Lanzarote's Festival Musica Visual. In 1998, Vollenweider began the recording of Kryptos, a work for symphonic orchestras and guest virtuosos from all over the world. He initiated a symphonic live project which he called Wolkenstein. In 1999, he returned to free improvisation and intimate musical dialogues with his album COSMOPOLY He invited friends, including American vocal acrobat Bobby McFerrin, Brazilian cult poet and singer Milton Nascimento, South-African ethno-jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, the 74-year-old Armenian duduk legend Djivan Gasparyan, Galician bag-pipe and whistle virtuoso Carlos Núñez Muñoz, the American singer-songwriter Carly Simon, and American blues-trombone master Ray Anderson, from all over the globe to create “world music”. 2000s Throughout 2000, he traveled with the COSMOPOLY project in Europe. Its changing configuration of musicians — almost daily — enabled Vollenweider to follow the open concept of the album. In New York City, he and his friends played two concerts for the United States release. Carly Simon joined the group, as did Mindy Jostyn, Carlos Núñez, Djivan Gasparyan, XiaoJing Wang and Walter Keiser. Concerts in Brazil — with Milton Nascimento and composer/pianist Wagner Tiso — followed. In 2001, Vollenweider performed in Bali (Indonesia) at the international conference "song of convergence" with Balinese musicians. He began writing the "symphonic novel" Tales of Kira Kutan, which premiered at the Warsaw Film Music Festival 2001, with the orchestra Sinfonia Varsowia (Yehudi Menuhin), conducted by co-orchestrator André Bellmont. Returning to his native Switzerland, Vollenweider premiered Carte blanche at the AVO Festival in Basel, where his guests, in addition to a mini orchestra, included Abdullah Ibrahim and David Lindley. In 2002, he performed at the Budapest Spring Festival in Hungary. Performances of the symphonies Tales of Kira Kutan and Wolkenstein at the Festival "Live at Sunset" in Zurich, with Sinfonia Varsovia, followed, as did a European summer tour, with the newly formed AVAF-mini orchestra, that included a performance at the "Big Chill Festival"