Experimental music festival Skaņu Mežs will take place at Hanzas Perons on October 4 and 5. However, its program has now been expanded with a free-entry opening concert at the bar Laska V21 (Vagonu 21) on September 28. The concert starts at 18:00 and will feature John Chantler, Aaron Edgcomb and Kirsten Carey, Ernests Valts Circenis and DJ sets by Nick Klein and Ģirts Reiniks.
Ernests Valts Circenis (Latvia)
Ernests Valts Circenis is a young Latvian composer. He graduated from Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, where he studied with Jānis Petraškevičs and has spent a year at the National Conservatory of Lyon (FR) with Prof. Michele Tadini. He has collaborated with the Latvian Radio Choir, Dailes Theatre (“Zēni nav meitenes”, dir. Diāna Kaijaka), chamber orchestra Sinfonia Concertante, and various internationally renowned musicians, such as singer Helēna Sorokina, pianist Robert Fleitz and the Swiss ensemble UMS ‘n JIP. The works have been performed at several European festivals, such as Latvian New Music Days, Empreintes (FR), and Druskomanija (LT). His work explores the intricacies of music perception, the interaction of sound and space, and the subject of discursivity, which is realised in both instrumental and electronic music.
The performance “breath and touch” looks at the inherent tenderness of human existence and the intimate world of the senses. It is based on two keywords: breath, central to life, and touch, which forms a large part of our connection with our surroundings. How do they interact with sound? Can we feel what we hear? Can breath be touched?
Aaron Edgcomb & Kirsten Carey (USA)
Aaron Edgcomb is a composer, drummer/percussionist, and multidisciplinary artist from Reno, NV, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work appears in contexts such as improvisational music, jazz, “new music,” noise, and song.
They have performed in and composed for such ensembles as the avant-rock band CLAK, the solo percussion and electronics project REA, the improvising chamber ensemble Tropos, and the improvising hardcore trio Trigger. They have worked with such musicians as Chris Williams, Lisa Hoppe, Anthony Coleman, Ted Reichman, John Zorn, Ledah Finck, and Anna Webber.
Aaron has presented work around the US and Europe at venues such as MoMA PS1, National Sawdust, the MATA festival, Big Ears, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Sarajevo Jazz Festival, and the Jazz Em Agosto Festival in Lisbon, not to mention the uncountable and invaluable living rooms, garages, basements, and DIY venues that are foundational to creative music.
Kirsten Carey is a composer, guitarist, shamisen player, and sound editor. She has toured across the USA, Canada, Japan, Europe, and Thailand. Her unique voice has been showcased at the International Society for Improvised Music Conference (2014), Edgefest (2018), the Co-Incidence Festival (2018), and Strange Beautiful Music (2023). Her wide-reaching work gained recognition from the Asian Cultural Council (2019) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2023), which awarded Carey grants for music research and outreach in Japan.
Carey wrote additional music for the hit Netflix Japan drama House of Ninjas, featuring her
shamisen playing throughout the leading score. She has been commissioned to write compositions for acclaimed musicians such as Chris Sies of Latitude 49 and Boston’s Hinge Ensemble. She scored the award-winning independent film Taken For Granted (dir. Manasi Patel) and wrote the current slate of music for The One Piece Podcast, which is ranked among the top five anime podcasts in the world.
Edgcomb and Carey’s duo album “Mature Defense Mechanism” was released on May 3 by Relative Pitch Records.
John Chantler (Australia, United Kingdom, Sweden)
John Chantler is a musician and organizer living in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2019 he started building a system for performance consisting of multiple battery-powered synthesizer/speaker things that can be variably suspended, swung, spun and set in locations without depending on the typical concert/club infrastructure and classical modes of performer/audience interaction. He has worked with Lawrence English, Steve Noble and Seymour Wright, and his music has been published by Room40 and SUPERPANG. Chantler also runs the Edition festival In Sweden as well as the label Fönstret.
John Chantler is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.
Nick Klein (USA, Germany)
Nick Klein is an artist working in sound and art and sometimes sound art with a lean towards the social potential in those modalities as they interact. Klein has recorded much music and shown work in visual art contexts. Klein is uninterested in the prohibitive ideological tropes and circumstances that both contexts offer and focuses the intent of his work on trying to see what productive energy comes from the friction between the two. Klein likes loud volume, cooking, offline community building, records, bars, synthesizers, and comedy. Klein is currently located in Berlin.
“The visceral sound of a Nick Klein record isn’t something that can be easily sourced or replicated,” writes Miami New Times. “This is partly due to Klein’s approach to texture, volume, and recording: In his hands, the medium becomes inescapably shaped by the material.”
Ģirts Reiniks (Latvia)
Ģirts Reiniks is a DJ, sound artist, and graphic designer from Riga who has been involved in the local underground scene since the early 2010s. Whether by playing techno in clubs, being one part of the Skaņu Mežs radio show, or playing experimental music records in a free-form manner for a few people in small venues. An interest in a wide but, at the same time, well-defined spectrum of music naturally led to performing for various contexts instead of constraining oneself to a particular genre. From the intense and saturated through the tranquil and elusive to the bizarre and challenging is where most of his musical interests lie.
After this event, Skaņu Mežs’ main concert evenings of October 4 and 5 will take place at the concert hall Hanzas Perons with Autechre and Armand Hammer as its main guests.
Skaņu Mežs is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga municipality, Danish Cultural Institute, Goethe-Institut Riga, Culture Ireland and Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Skaņu Mežs is part of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art and sound art project “tekhnē”, both supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. SHAPE+ is also supported by Pro Helvetia.
New work by Nick Klein is created as part of “tekhnē”.
Skaņu Mežs is also part of festival networks NERDS (North European Resonance and Dissonance Society) and ICAS.
The festival collaborates with such local businesses as Mans Robots, Valmiermuiža, Laima, Staburadze, Augļu Serviss, Very Berry and Balta.
Media partners: The Quietus, TVNET, Satori, Rīgas Laiks, Ir, Radio NABA and Mūzikas Saule.
