and June. That summer she appeared twice on the German TV channel GIGA-TV, a specialty channel devoted to digital lifestyles, once on their four-day special entitled Giga Island (which used her song "Fast wie Sommer" as its theme) and again as part of their coverage of the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA), an annual consumer electronics show in Berlin. Third album and additional appearances Kira began working on her third album in the fall of 2007. During its production she made several appearances, including a guest spot on the German radio station NDR's monthly show Hamburg Sounds (October 8, 2007) and relatively small-scale shows in Berlin and Hamburg in March and April 2008 respectively. Some of these shows were designed to try out new songs for the album. "New songs are like new varieties of chocolate," said an entry in the news section of Kira's web site in February. "They have to be tested and tasted before they can be firmly allowed to belong to the assortment." Funding for the album was boosted by a support grant from the German government's recently introduced "Initiative Musik" program in early July 2008. Meanwhile, after happy years with Freibank, Kira switched to Wintrup Musikverlage as her publisher. In the summer of 2008, Kira and other German artists were invited by the Goethe Institute to perform at a Chinese-German bi-cultural event in Guangzhou called "Deutschland und China--Gemeinsam in Bewegung" (Germany and China—Moving Forward Together), which started in Nanjing in August 2007 and ran in a succession of Chinese cities till October 2010. After her gig at this event, which took place on November 9, Kira performed at a number of universities in Chongqing. Shortly after her return to Germany, her new tour, called "Deine Insel" (Your Island), was announced. It ran from March 26 to April 4, 2009 in a succession of several German cities, including Dresden, Hamburg, Wuppertal and Berlin. In time for the tour, Kira released an EP of the same title, which contains some of the songs intended for the third album. At the invitation of Initiative Musik, Kira returned to China in mid-June for a series of concerts in Shenyang, Beijing and Shanghai with the bands SuidAkrA and Vorzeigekinder. Kira's appearance in Shenyang on June 13, which was also at the invitation of the Goethe Institute, was part of the "Deutschland und China--Gemeinsam in Bewegung" event. Later that spring she was nominated