The experimental music festival “Skaņu mežs” will celebrate its twentieth anniversary on September 23 and 24 at the cultural venue “Hanzas perons” (Hanzas iela 16a). The program of the festival has been supplemented with 13 more artists, the “Delfi” portal is informed by the organizers.
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According to Rihards T Endriksons, one of the authors of the idea of the festival and the creators of the program, this year “Skaņu meža” will also hear the sub-program of the festival, which will remind of the aesthetic searches that were characteristic of the festival in its early stages.
According to Endriksons, guests from the very first editions of the festival inspired by Editions Mego will return to Riga: sound artists, noise musicians and composers Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker.
To recall the festival’s early fascination with the acousmatic music proposed by GRM studio, theorist and musician François Bonnet – also known as Kassel Jaeger – will play the multi-channel music of composer Bernard Parmegiani, which could have been experienced in the first year of the “Forest of Sounds” in the presence of the still living composer. The founder, leader and most frequent guest musician of “Editions Mego” Peter Rehberg, who died prematurely last year, was also supposed to perform at the festival. This “Forest of Sounds” is partly a discreet tribute to Röberg, according to Endriskon.
Free improvisation at the festival will be represented by the “Ahmed” quartet, which “The Wire” magazine called “one of the most progressive jazz groups on the planet” in its August issue. The ensemble is led by Pat Thomas, described by The Guardian as “a virtuoso pianist who is also a masterful synthesizer and electronics player” and “a central figure in British and European free improvisation”. The group takes the work of multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Abdul-Malik (Ahmed Abdul-Malik) as the basis of its fusion of free improvisation and Arabic music, but reduces Malik’s compositions to repetitive fragments of sound with aggressiveness and increasing energy, writes the organizer of “Skaņu meža”. The band also features saxophonist Seymour Wirght, drummer Antonin Gerbal and double bassist Joel Grip.
The German-Austrian composer Peters Ablinger, who has worked as a guest conductor for the ensembles “Klangforum Wien” and “United Berlin”, and is a lecturer at the University of Hardersfield, is considered a special guest of the festival. At the heart of Ablinger’s work is the desire to make the human ear doubt what it hears, and this is achieved through sound art installations rich in cultural symbols, through poignantly abstract electronic compositions, as well as comic performative works, as well as compositions that the listener simply has you have to imagine in your mind. The composer himself asks: “At what point does what we hear stop being music and become information or noise?”
Ablinger’s music will be played at the festival by the violinist Biliana Vuchkova, who has previously also performed the music of Giacinto Scelsi at the festival. Vuchkova also works as an improviser and recently conducted a residency at the prestigious concert hall “Cafe OTO”. Vuchkova will perform both her own and Ablinger’s music, and at the end of the concert the composer will join her in a joint improvisation.
British-Iraqi soprano Alya Al-Sultani in a duet with vinyl manipulator and sound artist Mariam Rezaei, as well as Indian-American vocalist Amirtha Kidambi in a duet with drummer Matt Evans will also perform at the festival. .
Kidambi and Evans claim that they were initially united by grieving for departed loved ones, and the duo’s music is characterized as a mutual grieving ritual. The New York Times describes Kidambi’s music as “a boiling cauldron of possibility and constant activity that both terrifies and fascinates the listener.”
Peru-born experimental singer M. Caye Castagneto (M. Caye Castagneto) will combine Latin rhythms, “new wave” guitars, hypnagogy and “pagan mourning songs”, coming up with mysterious, even elusive pop music, writes Endrikson.
Contemporary music composer Yvette Janine Jackson will perform with a solo electronic music performance. Jackson graduated from Harvard University and is known for her civil rights radio operas. Media “Pitchfork” describes them as follows: “You have to listen to them in complete darkness. It won’t be an easy listen, and it shouldn’t be.”
A new work by composer Evija Skuķe for two players is also expected. Skukes’ teachers were Pauls Dambis and Pēteris Vasks, while her musical influences range from metal bands “Sleep” and “Slayer” to composers such as Gerard Grisey and Fausto Romitelli.
It has already been reported that experimental hip-hop trio Clipping, as well as post-industrial musician Juko Araki and British producer duo Space Afrika, as well as Latvian guitarist Edgars Rubenis, will also perform in “Skaņu meža” this year.
Additional program will be announced closer to the festival.
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