Riga, Latvia’s Skaņu Mežs festival for adventurous music has participated in the White Night culture forum since its first iteration in Latvia.
This year’s free-entry White Night concert by Skaņu Mežs will take place at the photo studio and event space SunsStudo (9A Magoņu Street). Admission to the opening event is free, and it begins at 20:00.
This year, the event will be a celebration of Morton Feldman’s 100th birthday. The project Weaving Feldman will perform one of the composer’s most ambitious late works – the nearly six-hour-long String Quartet No. 2 – visually accompanied by textile artist Leïla Pile, thus drawing a surprisingly deep parallel between Feldman’s music and his fascination with Middle Eastern rugs. The players are Maya Bennardo, Veronika Paleeva, Victor Guaita Igual and Nathan Watts.
The concert will be opened by a first-time duo performance by Alan Wilkinson and Chris Pitsiokos – players from two different generations and scenes whoare nevertheless both fascinated by the more radical side of improvised music.
Weaving Feldman
Weaving Feldman is a multidisciplinary performance uniting Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983) and the textile art of weaving. A milestone in the repertoire for string quartet, this piece’s extreme length (ca. 5 hours 30 minutes) defies any conventional concert situation and challenges both performers and audiences. From the beginning to the end, a myriad of ever-changing patterns come and go, weaving fragments together into a mesmerising, transformative experience that challenges memory and perception.
Feldman was fascinated by nomadic rugs and took inspiration from their structures of imperfect symmetry for his late compositions. In this unique new performance, the process is reversed: a weaving score is created from Feldman’s music.
Alongside the string quartet, the weaver, seated with the loom around her waist, follows the unfolding of the music, translating it into patterns. The fabric that originates from this process is both a witness to the passing of time and a visual retelling of Feldman’s music.
Maya Bennardo is a violinist and composer based in Stockholm whose work blurs the boundaries between performer and composer and is devoted to music of the present. She is a founding member of the duo andPlay, performs with pianist Karl Larson in the Bennardo-Larson Duo, and previously played in the internationally renowned Mivos Quartet.
Frankfurt‑based violinist Veronika Paleeva performs with ensemble reflektor and collaborates with leading groups such as Ensemble Modern, Fabrik Quartet, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and the Frankfurt Opera. She holds degrees from Würzburg, Cologne, and the International Ensemble Modern Academy, where she completed a master’s program in contemporary music.
Victor Guaita Igual is a violist dedicated to new music and sonic experimentation, working regularly with ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Ictus, and Klangforum Wien. Alongside collaborations with numerous artists, he develops his own projects and will be an artist‑in‑residence (“maker”) at Concertgebouw Brugge for the 2026–2028 seasons.
Cellist Nathan Watts, originally from Philadelphia and now based in Frankfurt, focuses on contemporary music and improvisation through diverse collaborations and programming. He performs with the Mivos Quartet and Broken Frames Syndicate, releases solo projects rooted in Deep Listening, and holds degrees from CIM, Rice University, and the International Ensemble Modern Academy.
Brussels‑based artist Leïla Pile works with conceptual, performative, and artisanal textile practices that use her own body as a measuring instrument to explore space, gesture, and material. Her work has been exhibited widely, supported by residencies at ISELP and RAVI, and recognised with the Contextile Biennale Prize and a selection for the Salon de Montrouge.
Morton Feldman was an influential American composer whose quietly radical works reshaped late‑20th‑century music through their vast durations, delicate timbres, and non‑hierarchical structures. Celebrated as a central figure of the New York School, his innovations in form, perception, and sound continue to define the landscape of experimental and contemporary music.
Alan Wilkinson & Chris Pitsiokos
After leaving Art College in Leeds in the late 1970s, Alan Wilkinson became a key figure in the city’s improvisation scene, forming the high‑energy trio Hession/Wilkinson/Fell and later touring with Derek Bailey’s Company. Since relocating to London in 1990, he has continued to champion improvised music through long‑running club nights like flimflam and through collaborations with leading artists, alongside his ongoing work in groups such as his trio with John Edwards and Steve Noble, Akode, Hatka, and his trio with Alex Ward and Jem Doulton.
"At its highest points, this session unleashes some of the most preposterously powerful energy jazz heard since Peter Brötzmann's Yatagarasu trio with Takeo Moriyama and Masahiko Satoh" – Daniel Spicer, The Wire Magazine
Chris Pitsokos introduces himself thus: “I am a New York-born, Berlin-based saxophonist, composer, improviser, writer and organiser. I have never been interested in genre, but my music has been variously described by others as noise, jazz, free jazz, musique concrete, improvised music, art rock, new music, sound art, brutal prog, electro-acoustic music, etc. If there is an abiding principle in my work, it is dialectic: by endlessly interrogating my artistic practices, choices, and ways of living, I am trying to get nowhere. And in a world where everywhere seems terrible, nowhere is where I want to be. One can think of this as a kind of endless, disciplined searching that I realised a little while ago was doomed to fail.”
Chris Pitsiokos has performed with Keiji Haino, Chris Corsano, Nate Wooley and Weasel Walter, among others.
The event is supported by the Riga City Municipality, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the sound‑art project “tekhnē”, co‑funded by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia.
