CREATIVE ACTIVITY

Contemporary Music Festival “Music of Canges”

“Music of Changes” is a new festival of Klaipėda Concert Hall (KCH) that is dedicated to the contemporary music (music of the 20th – 21st c.c.). It is organized in 2005 for the first time. The festival was inspired by the establishment of the new concert hall in Klaipėda that essentially changed conditions of cultural and especially musical life of the city. Possibilities that the modern hall provides stimulate the searches for new forms of expression and actual musical projects.

“Music of Changes” is the name of a composition of famous American composer of the 20th John Cage.

Idea

The Programme of the Festival was constituted first of all on purpose to find fundamental points of reference for the real values in this constantly changing world. It is not only the music of our days that sounds in the festival, but also the compositions of the 20th century that were tested and certified by time, having influenced or still influencing the movement of music history, i.e. changes.

Programme

“Music of Changes” consists of 10 events: 6 concerts and 4 video clubs. Diverse music styles, genres and composition techniques are presented in the events: from folk songs to electronic music, from video opera to jazz. Programme of the Festival is oriented by its aesthetics and content both to the intellectual and wider audiences.

Special attention (4 concerts) in the festival is paid to the spread of creative activities of Lithuanian composers and performers.

“Music of Changes” in cooperation with Vilnius festivals “Vilnius Jazz” and “Gaida” (“Note”) presents two guest collectives in Klaipėda: “Willem Breuker Kollektief” (Holland) and Quasar Saxophone Quartet (Canada).

Symbolic Beginning of the Festival

The 21st of September is the eve of the 130th birth anniversary of the great Lithuanian artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. This personality is associated with the beginning of Lithuanian professional music that conditioned the marked changes in the history of national culture. The programme “Following M. K. Čiurlionis” of the collectives of Klaipėda concert hall – Chamber Orchestra and choir “Aukuras” – involve compositions of M. K. Čiurlionis and its reflections in the music of Bronius Kutavičius, Mindaugas Urbaitis, Algirdas Martinaitis.

Pianist Živilė Karkauskaitė from Vilnius and conductor Robertas Šervenikas participate in the concert.

Performance of the “Dream Team” Leaders

“Ensemble of Note” (“Gaidos ansamblis”) was organized three years ago from the best Lithuanian musicians. It performs more abroad than in Lithuania. It is called a “ambassador of the new Lithuanian music”, “dream team” of the performers of contemporary music. The Ensemble will perform in the festival in Klaipėda in its constitution of “Soloists of Guide Ensemble”. Its programme “Hommages” will present the pieces of Lithuanian composers Osvaldas Balakauskas, Remigijus Merkelis, Onutė Narbutaitė, Vidmantas Bartulis, Antanas Kučinskas that were inspired by the music of the past in the most paradoxical contexts of today.

Giddy with Moon

Singer Skaidra Jančaitė that distinguishes among her colleagues with individual creative expression and especial harmony of her personality together with instrumental ensemble conducted by Robertas Šervenikas prepared a programme for the festival “Pjero of the Moon”. The main accent of the programme is the vocal cycle “Pjero of the Moon” (“Perrot lunaire”, 1912) by Arnold Schöenberg, originator of dodecaphony, which is considered to be one of the most suggestive expressionistic pieces. Poetic text is conveyed in unusual “speaking – singing” way in this melodrama. S. Jančaitė appears as Pjero, in the costume created by designer Juozas Statkevičius. Text of the piece is read in Lithuanian by the actor Birutė Marcinkevičiūtė.

Snappy and theatrical vocal cycle by Dmitrij Shostakovich “Satires” is intended to be the culmination of the first part of the concert. Generally speaking, theatricality and expressivity are the savour of the concert that makes it attractive for the listeners of diverse artistic experience.

Club Music in the Concert Hall

Specially for the youth audience is dedicated the project “Neogard-Club-Electronic” of Vytautas V.Jurgutis, composer, creator of video projections and DJ. Electronic, club music and the image projections of the real time are combined in this project. In pursuance of the contact with audience the composer invokes the elements of pop music, rhythms of club dance music and the means of multimedia technologies. He also plumbs experimental electronic music, sound programming. He has written sophisticated electronic compositions that have become one of the brightest examples of contemporary Lithuanian electronic music overall.

It is going to be the first electronic music project in Klaipėda concert hall. It is full of surprises and endeavours to exploit available possibilities of the spacious and modern sound and image systems of the hall at the maximum.

The Unique Dutch Collective

“Willem Breuker Kollektief” is an ensemble that is prominent in all Europe. It feels at home both on the stages of the famous concert halls and the jazz clubs. Compositions that the ensemble performs overpass the boundaries of the styles: they combine peculiarities of jazz and contemporary academical music, improvisations, theatre, politics and humour. This distinctive, intriguing and playful music fascinates with unexpected turns, change of the spirits and irony. Plenitude of quotations and stylizations, reverberations of the marches, dances and cinema music sound in this music.

10 performers of the highest rank perform in the collective that was gathered in 1974. saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger Willem Breuker directs the ensemble and writes the music to it.

Canadian Saxophone Quartet

Quasar Saxophone Quartet was established in 1994 in Montreal. The Quartet pays the biggest attention for the new music, promotion of the works of composers of Canada. The members of the ensemble also play the improvisational music, jazz, rock. Performers of the Quartet are interested in the possibilities provided by electronics, instrumental theatre, multidisciplinary projects. In the intriguing programme of the concert there will be compositions that will present the modes and intonations of Bali Gamelano, unusual ways of strike of the sound.

Innovation I: Club of the Festival – Video Reviews

Open and susceptible to innovations, enthusiastic residents of Klaipėda are invited to visit four events of festival club – video reviews. In the Programme: Alban Berg opera “Wozzek”, Kaija Saariaho opera “L’amour de loin” (“Love from the Distance”, fragments), John Adams opera “The Death of Klinghoffer”, Steve Reich video documentary opera “Three Tales”, also movie “Koyaanisqatsi” of the director Godfrey Regby with the music of the composer Philip Glass, guitar symphony performed by “Glenn Branca Ensemble” and WARP video clips (intellectual dance music). Composer Mindaugas Urbaitis, musicologists Laima Vilimienė and Linas Paulauskis, pianist Petras Geniušas will be the guests of the club and comment compositions.

Innovation II: Pre-concert Meetings

Before most of the concerts meetings with the authors and performers will be organized. There will be possibility to ask participants of the meetings questions, discuss the nature and importance of changes in the life of the modern society.

Festival “Music of Changes” invites to change the sound surroundings of the city and change you yourselves!