In 2018, Skaņu Mežs festival for adventurous music will contribute to Latvia’s Poetry Days for the first time. It is an international poetry and art festival, and is often praised as one of the most important Latvian literature-related events.
Skaņu Mežs will contribute to the festival by organizing an interdisciplinary event on September 16 in Jelgava, at the Jelgava History and Art Museum of Ģederts Eliass (Akadēmijas street 10). German improvisers Olaf Rupp (guitar) and Ulrike Brand (cello) will collaborate wil Latvian-Russian poet and translator Sergey Moreino, who will be reading his translations of poems by Mariella Mehr and Johannes Bobrowski. The event starts at 16:00. Entry is free.
The specific consonance of cello and electric guitar creates the unique poetics of the Rupp-Brand duo. Despite of belonging to very different semantic fields they reveal confusingly similar timbres and playing techniques. Arco and pizzicato are just as exchangeable as are overtone sounds, arpeggios, clusters, noise and other extended techniques. This is only possible because of an elaborate setup of loudness-modulation on the electric guitar. The result is a stylistic freedom in an associative “play” with similarity and role exchange, reprise and anticipation. The duo-constellation is potentiating these effects when the continuing input of sounds from one player becomes part of the overall sound and at the same time acts upon the other player creating a reciprocal flow of communication.
Because of her experience in performing contemporary classical compositions in the past decades, cello player Ulrike Brand can draw upon all the varieties of different extended playing techniques that are used there. She uses sounds and noises as equivalent material, pitch is treated as a continuum and the whole body of the instrument can create sounds. This is also accentuating the gestural element of the performance.
Guitar player Olaf Rupp explores on his instrument in uncompromising radicallity the field of free improvisation. The extreme virtuosic playing techniques which he has developed by himself are the result of a unique artistic discipline far away from the usual standards and conventions. He is always expanding the sonic range of his instrument evermore. In his subtle, pointillistic soundworld every single note appears as a colour-dot inside of a larger matrix.
Sergey Moreino was born in Moscow in 1964 where he graduated from Moscow State University of Physics and Technology. He moved to Latvia in 1987 and has been working as an independent author and translator since 1988. Moreino published 40 books of poetry, translation, prose, essays. He translates poetry from Latvian, Polish and German (e.g. the poets Čaks, Bērziņš, Kunnoss, Miłosz, Krynicki, Trakl, Celan, Eich, et al.). Moreino was a chairman of the jury of the “Russian Gulliver Prize” (Russia) and is the editor of the literary magazines “Vārds” (Latvia) and “Балтика” (Kaliningrad, Russia) as well as editor of the series “География перевода” (Geography of Translation) by the publishers “Русский Гулливер” (Russki Gulliver, Moscow). He is also a creative partner in publishing office “Literature Combine” (“Literatūras KOMBAINS”).
The event is supported by State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOH-hQZCTIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5zqoTPjiuE
