On July 2, the experimental music festival Skaņu Mežs will hold an exclusive mini-edition in the city of Liepāja, featuring musical acts and sound artists from Latvia, Netherlands, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom, Sweden, USA and Germany. Tickets currently cost 25 EUR and can be purchased at www.bilesuserviss.lv. The venue is in the industrial territory of the now-defunct “Liepājas Metalurgs” factory (Eksporta iela 3), which was once an integral part of life in the city. 

Music journalist Tom Service of BBC Radio 3 says the following: “Skaņu Mežs casts its net as generously as possible over the vast and thrilling terrains of new music-making.”

This summer, The Quietus also described Skaņu Mežs as “the most internationally recognised platform for experimental music in Latvia”.

Skaņu Mežs has twice been hailed by The Wire Magazine as the biggest experimental and avant-garde music festival in the Baltic States. 

Seeing as all forms of modern music have an experimental dimension, there is always a wide variety of musical genres represented at the festival – from electro-acoustic music, free improvisation, contemporary composition, and noise to interesting shifts in dance music, hip-hop, and rock or metal.

The program of this concert evening will feature the fast-changing and dynamic pop music of Hakushi Hasegawa, the microtonal music ensemble Harmonic Space Orchestra, the post-club electro-acoustics of Flora Yin Wong as well as Japanese free jazz icon Akira Sakata with drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Five more acts will be added to the program in the coming months.

Skaņu Mežs in Liepāja is being implemented within the framework of the “Liepāja 2027” programme, using funding provided by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Liepāja, and the municipalities of South Kurzeme and Kuldīga. The “Liepāja 2027” programme is supported by its main partner in environmental education and sustainability, the CleanR Group, its main partner in mobility and international communication, the airBaltic Corporation, and its mobility partner, the transport operator Lux Express Latvia.