On September 3, as part of the annual White Night contemporary culture forum, the Skaņu Mežs festival will host its traditional experimental music evening. The free entry event will take place at St. Saviour’s Anglican Church (2A Anglican street); it will start at 20:00.
As it has often done before, Skaņu Mežs has decided to organize its White Night concert evening as a mini festival, that is, with many different manifestations of experimental music. The line-up features John Edwards (UK), Isabella Forciniti (AT/IT), Katarina Gryvul (UA), Tony Elieh (LB/DE), John McCowen (US/IS), Stabs (LV).
Tony Elieh is one of the pioneers of rock and experimental music in Lebanon. A founding member of the first post-rock group of post-war Lebanon, The Scrambled Eggs, he has since developed his unique electric bass skills in various groups and styles of music including collaborating with in groups such as Karkhana, Calamita and Wormholes Electric.
In recent years he has performed a solo set of heavily processed bass generated sounds.
Isabella Forciniti is a Vienna based sound artist from Italy. Currently she explores the musical and social potential of digital networking via mobile devices considering artistic, scientific and technological perspectives at the Anton Bruckner Private University Upper Austria within a research project lead by Volkmar Klien. She has gained experience with movies during her work with Kubelka’s „Arnulf Rainer“ film strips and scoring gender-critical silent movies from the early 20th century.
Isabella Forciniti cooperated with Elliott Sharp, Burkhard Stangl, Christina “Chra” Nemec, Patrick Pulsinger, Antye Greie-Ripatti, Billy Roisz as well as other artists. Forciniti performed at numerous festivals such as Wien Modern (AT), Simultan Festival (RO), Festival Visiones Sonoras (MX), Unsound Festival (PL), Elevate Festival (AT).
Katarina Gryvul is a Ukrainian born composer, sound artist, music producer, violinist and educator. In her work she focuses on a variety of timbres, sound textures and mixing organic, classical music with progressive forms of electronic music production. Gryvul studied in Lviv and Krakow at the Music Academy. Currently, she is studying computer music and sound art at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. Her pieces were performed at festivals such as: Warsaw Autumn, Ars Electronica, CTM Festival, Ephemera Festival (Produced by Unsound), ZKM -next generation 9.0, Tremplin de la création, Audio Art Festival, International Festival of Contemporary Music Poznańska Wiosna Muzyczna Ecosistema Sonico, Vox Electronica, Contrasts International Contemporary Music Festival, and many others.
John McCowen is a composer/clarinetist focused on extending the possibilities of the clarinet. His work has been described by The New Yorker as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed on a slide”. John’s multiphonic approach embraces drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to squeeze out the compositional potential within a single, acoustic sound source. Documents of this practice have been released by Edition Wandelweiser, International Anthem, Astral Spirits, SUPERPANG, Dinzu Artefacts, and others. John was a 2017 & 2019 artist-in-residence at Lijiang Studio in Yunnan, China, and also the 2020 artist-in-residence at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. He received the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Award for excellence in music composition in 2016 from Mills College where he received an MA in Music Composition under the tutelage of Roscoe Mitchell. He currently resides in Reykjavik, Iceland.
John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.
“I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz.” – Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
Stabs is a Latvian trio that plays power electronics and experimental rock.
Mart Avi is like the twilight samurai of modern pop, whose craft has become slicker with each new output. He grew up in a pint-sized Estonian village named Vara (“Treasure” in English), toying around with rusty remnants from its industrious past that led to creating the sort of nowhere-somewhere music, mapping uncharted territories between hyperkinetic now-pop and timeless grandeur. His music and stage persona have captivated influential music and culture thinkers such as Simon Reynolds and found consistent coverage in international outlets such as MOJO, Wire, Crack, Electronic Sound, BBC 6 Music, etc. His latest LP “Blade” (2021) is a seductive, sharp and ravishing mutant R&B with a peculiar swing. Quoting MOJO, “he’d make an excellent pop star.”
Tony Elieh, Isabella Forciniti and Katarina Gryvul represent the innovative music platform SHAPE+ co-founded by Skaņu Mežs, with support from the EU Creative Europe programme.
White Night is a modern urban culture forum – one night a year locals and tourists are invited to enjoy a vigil creativity aimed to change their perception of environment and cultural life. This is a chance to purposefully experience something extraordinary and be involved in various activities offered by artists. White Night tradition was started in 2002 in Paris and it spread like a positive epidemic to Brussels, Rome and Madrid, with Riga as one of the early adopters too. Later on, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Porto and Valetta joined the White Night movement in Europe, while Toronto, Tokyo, Montreal and other cities joined it globally.
The event’s supporters are Riga Council and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Komentarai