Riga’s experimental music festival Skaņu Mežs 2026 will take place on October 9–10 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street). Two-day tickets can be purchased here; their price is 60 EUR. It was previously announced that Joe McPhee would be the festival's guest of honor. However, the 87-year-old musician has been advised by his doctor to cancel his European concert engagements this year, including Skaņu Mežs. The decision comes after a series of concert cancellations in the United States due to health complications. Rob Brown, a veteran of New York's free jazz scene and one of the most distinctive alto saxophonists in contemporary creative music, will perform with John Edwards and Klaus Kugel in his place.
In 2025, All About Jazz described Rob Brown as follows: “Rob Brown is perhaps the most recognizable alto saxophonist on the East Coast. His sound is abrasive, bellowing and free, oozing with a crooning full-force poignancy reminiscent of his late mentor Lee Konitz. Perhaps it is the singular presence of Charlie Parker in his oscillating scoops and double-tonguing that grants him a unique flare and, with it, a bottomless rhythmic vocabulary.”
A few weeks ago, Brown’s colleague, pianist Matthew Shipp simply wrote this on social media: “Alto saxist Rob Brown is one of the greatest improvisers in the world. Period.”
Rob Brown was born 1962 in Hampton Virginia. He has been playing the saxophone for over 50 years. He moved to New York City in 1984 to play with Matthew Shipp. Soon he was also working with William Parker, then Whit Dickey and Joe Morris. Daniel Levin became an important collaborator in the early 2000’s, and Steve Swell has become a frequent collaborator in recent years. He has worked with Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon and Amiri Baraka. He has many recordings as a leader and sideman, published by such renowned labels as AUM Fidelity, Rogueart, Ayler Records and Clean Feed. He also collaborates with dancers, poets and visual artists. Brown has been an integral part of the Vision Festival since its inception in 1996.
This will be Rob Brown’s first musical encounter with John Edwards and Klaus Kugel.
John Edwards (born 1964 in London) is a central figure in European free improvisation, known for a fiercely physical double‑bass style and a vast range of extended techniques. Active since the late 1980s, he has become a core presence in the UK and European scenes, performing with Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel, John Butcher, Pat Thomas, and many others, and playing an extraordinary 150–200 concerts a year, making him one of the most active improvising bassists of his generation.
He is a long-standing friend of the Skaņu Mežs festival, and has performed here with Wadada Leo Smith, Charles Gayle, Peter Brötzmann, Mark Sanders, Roger Turner, and Steve Noble, as well as solo.
"Drummer Klaus Kugel is one of Central Europe's busiest and most articulate modern jazz drummers... he treads the boundary between inside and outside playing in a particularly incisive way; always listening and never getting caught up in his own considerable chops,” writes Dave Wayne of AllAboutJazz.
Klaus Kugel studied at the School of Jazz in Munich. Since 1989, he has attracted attention worldwide through projects with Steve Swell, Sabir Mateen, Peter Evans, William Parker, Bobby Few, Roy Campbell, Jemeel Moondoc, Marco Eneidi, Mars Williams, Charles Gayle, Conny Bauer, Ken Vandermark, Knox Chandler, Mark Tokar, Christopher Dell, Herb Robertson, and many others. Over the past 30 years, he has given numerous concerts and appeared at festivals throughout Europe, the Baltic States, Canada, the USA, Syria, Japan, Mexico, Russia, China, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Israel.
The festival is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Taiwan Ministry of Culture, BALTA and Valmiermuižas Alus.
Skaņu Mežs is part of the sound art project tekhnē, supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. The festival is also part of the NERDS network, co-funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.
Media partners include The Quietus, TVNET, Satori.lv, Radio NABA, Arterritory, magazine “Mūzikas Saule”, and la.lv.
