The JVLMA contemporary music festival «deciBels» / Article will take place for the eighth time

The guests of the festival will also be composers Juste Janulīte, Mantauts Krukauskas, improvisation musician Teodors Pārkers, jazz trumpeter Sebastiāns Soldržinskis. The festival includes an extensive program of lectures and master classes with a special emphasis on exploring the possibilities of surround sound.

The festival will be opened on March 21 at 6 pm in the JVLMA LMT Chamber Hall by the concert of the winners of the Third Contemporary Chamber Music Interpreters’ Competition “See (!) Logs”. Like “deciBel”, one of the goals of which is to activate JVLMA students to interpret contemporary music, “See (!) Logs” encourages music high school students to focus on this goal.

The Latvian Radio Choir will perform in the concert program “Aquarelle” in the Great Hall of JVLMA on March 22 at 19.00. Five Latvian and world premieres will be performed under the direction of five young conductors, JVLMA students and master students, Anastasijas Kildiša, Patrika Kārlis Stepes, Shino Yamasaki, Matīss Pēteris Circeņš and Oskars Jeske: Justė Janulytė, Lithuania composition “Aquarelle” and Mantautas Krukauskas (Mantautas Krukauskas, Lithuania) for “The Prayer” choir and immersive live time electronics, as well as compositions by young composers, students of the Department of Composition at JVLMA Annija Zariņa, Henrij Poikāns and Ernest Valts Circeņš.

On March 23, the British Hall pianist Jonathan Powell will perform “Sequentia Cyclica” by the prominent but little-known Latvian-Indian composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, 1892-1988. Day of wrath (full title is “Sequentia Cyclica super Dies Iræ ex Missa pro Defunctis ad Clavicembaliusum”). As the organizers emphasized,

it is a very voluminous work that takes eight and a half hours to complete. Therefore, the concert will be extended throughout the day with short breaks.

On March 24, at 8 pm in the Riga Art Space, the program “Big Band Minimalism” will feature performances by JVLMA and RDKS big band and soloists Sebastian Sołdrzyński (Poland) and Dāvis Jurkas conducted by Swedish composer, conductor Mats Holmqvist.

On March 26, at 7 pm in the Great Hall of JVLMA, at the end of the festival, the electroacoustic music concert “Ambisonics” will feature compositions created or adapted to the surround sound system of 17 speakers. In the concert system of spatial sound, thanks to the location of many sound sources in the room, the sound is dynamically directed in three dimensions, not only the usual sound from the front is covered, but the sound also moves behind, above and below the listener, the organizers explained. The concert will feature music by two festival guests, Mantaut Krukauskas and Theodore Parker (Estonia). Alongside these artists will be Voldemar Johansson’s work “Hyperboreal”, as well as a composition for trombone and electronics “Exiguum” by JVLMA composition student Dace Mangulsone, in which the solo part will be performed by Ance Vanaga. The program also includes works by two Norwegian composers, Tine Surel Lange and Anders Tveit.

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