The 2026 edition of the Skaņu Mežs festival for experimental music will take place on October 9 and 10 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street). In anticipation of the main event, an opening night will be held at the photo studio and event space SunsStudo (9A Magoņu Street) on October 2. Admission to the opening event is free, and it begins at 19:00.
The program consists of composer Eric Wubbels and the TAK ensemble presenting the Riga version of their collaborative piece “interbeing”, flautist Laura Cocks premiering “Skin”, a new composition by Jānis Petraškevičs, Veronica Avola with her project Trigger Object, Palestinian underground music veteran Muqata’a, and Taiwanese media artist LTY.
Eric Wubbels, “interbeing”
Eric Wubbels (b.1980) is a composer and performer. Since 2004 he has been pianist and Co-Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble (NYC).
A recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Composer Prize, Wubbels has been awarded grants and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Foundation/Library of Congress, and Chamber Music America, among others, and his music has been presented by LA Phil Green Umbrella series, Huddersfield Festival, ISSUE Project Room, Cafe OTO, Roulette, Bowerbird,LAMPO, ECLAT Festival, TRANSIT, Rainy Days, TIME:SPANS, Archipel, Ostrava Days, EAR WE ARE, Zurich Tage für Neue Musik, and Ultraschall.
In “interbeing”, the five musicians of TAK enact a slow-moving, ritualised performance of connectedness and mutual interdependence.
Every performance of “interbeing” draws from a folio encompassing music, text, video, movement, and recipes. These elements have been collaboratively developed with composer Eric Wubbels over the past eight years and counting, and are newly arranged with each performance to facilitate an evening-long conversation with the specific community in which the performance is situated. The performance space is often transformed to soften the boundary between performers and audience members.
TAK
Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practising truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR).
TAK is a mixed-quintet committed to musical exploration and experimentation and dedicated to commissioning new works and directly collaborating with composers and other artists. They have premiered hundreds of works to date since their founding in 2013. Recent highlighted collaborations include large-scale works by Eric Wubbels, Michelle Lou, Brandon López, Tyshawn Sorey, and Weston Olencki. The group has performed internationally at IntACT Festival (Thailand), Music Current Festival (Ireland), Cluster Festival (Canada), Harpa Concert Hall (Iceland), and the Delian Academy (Greece), among many others, and enjoys an active schedule of domestic touring in the U.S.
TAK is: Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; Ellery Trafford, percussion.
Jānis Petraškevičs, “Skin”
Jānis Petraškevičs (born 1978 in Riga) studied violin at the Emīls Dārziņš Music School, later turning to music theory and composition. He continued his composition studies at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music with Pēteris Plakidis, as well as at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm with Sven‑David Sandström, and later in the master’s program at the University of Gothenburg with Ole Lützow‑Holm. In 2014, he earned a PhD at the Latvian Academy of Music with a dissertation on multidimensionality in late‑20th‑century avant‑garde music.
Petraškevičs has received commissions from leading contemporary music institutions, including Ensemble InterContemporain for “trop proche / trop loin” (Centre Pompidou, 2002), Wigmore Hall and Ensemble Modern for “gefährlich dünn” (London, 2014), and the Donaueschinger Musiktage for an orchestral work premiered at the festival’s closing concert in 2017.
He describes “Skin” in the following words: “The work strives to be polyphonic (despite the flute’s inherently monophonic nature), conceived as a plastic choreography of time and space. Individual material lines reveal different mutual relationships on a scale from integration to collision. Yet harmony is never absolute… In this regard, I have been inspired by certain writers, especially Franz Kafka. In his novel The Castle, the various characters desperately try to merge, but never succeed, and thus each of them seems destined to remain within their own separate world.”
Laura Cocks
Laura Cocks (they/she) is a flautist with “febrile instrumental prowess” (The New York Times), who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music and “creates intricate, spellbinding works that have a visceral physicality to them” (Foxy Digitalis).
Laura is the executive director and flautist of TAK ensemble, “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practising truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), with whom Laura makes music "that combines crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (WIRE Magazine). They are also a member of Talea Ensemble, noted for their “astonishing fluidity,” “compelling lucidity, ” and “precise control” (The New York Times).
Trigger Object
Vern Avola is a composer and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon. She has been playing music for over 20 years, beginning her solo work in 2007. She currently releases music under the name Trigger Object; earlier iterations of her solo project include EMS, Avola, and Dirty Centaur. Her work combines bone-crunching beats, wailing electronics, and multi-layered noisescapes described as "fractured, warped, and beautifully deranged."
Avola has been part of several projects, including the duos Elrond and Bear Spray, the noise collective Shrew Florist, and bands Prizehog, Dead (Australia), and Cocaine DVD. She has performed internationally since 2006 and hosts a radio show on East Village Radio. She has also hosted shows on KRCB, KFFP, The Neon Hospice (UK), and Repeater Radio (UK).
She runs her own label, EMS Records.
LTY
Lai Tsung-Yun (L.T.Y.) is a Taiwanese sound and media artist, curator, and artistic director of Lacking Sound Festival, Taiwan's leading platform for experimental sound and noise art. His work explores vibration as a physical and cultural force, using sound to investigate perception, space, and new modes of listening. Working across modular synthesis, algorithmic composition, real-time sampling, and signal feedback, Lai has performed and undertaken artist residencies throughout Europe and Asia, including Cité internationale des arts (Paris), Baltic Analog Lab (Riga), and Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) (Stockholm).
Through both his artistic practice and curatorial work, Lai connects Taiwan's experimental sound community with international networks while fostering collaboration, emerging voices, and fearless sonic exploration.
Muqata’a
Muqata’a is an electronic musician and producer based in Ramallah, Palestine. His work combines sampled material, field recordings, synths, and fragments from radio into layered compositions driven by unstable rhythms and shifting tonal structures.
A founding member of the Ramallah Underground Collective (2002–2009), he is also part of the sound and image performance group Tashweesh alongside Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. His live sets are immersive and confrontational, layering textures, rattling bass, and momentary torrents of broken beats to disrupt and destabilise. His work explores memory, fragmentation, and transformation through sound.
The festival is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, 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.
