From March 31 to April 4, the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (JVLMA) Contemporary Music Festival "deciBels" will take place for the eleventh time, the organizers said.
This year will be special, as the festival will go beyond the usual premises of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (JVLMA), starting cooperation with the neighboring Riga Circus. The festival's closing concert will take place in the concert hall "Angārs" in the Tallinas Street Quarter, said the festival's artistic director, composer Anna Fišere.
This year, the festival will offer six musical events, the common feature of which is their deliberate difference from one another. Each offering a different, perhaps even unprecedented listening experience, they together invite to experience the glorious diversity of contemporary music and the spirit of the boundary-breaker. As usual, the program will also include several free lectures and masterclasses.
At the opening concert on March 31 at 18:00, the audience is invited to take a musical walk from the Opera House to the Circus Building, during which musical performances will greet them in quite unusual locations and formats.
The festival's main event will be a concert by the Finnish contemporary music ensemble Defunensemble on April 2 at 19:00 in the JVLMA Great Hall.
On April 4 at 19.00, the festival will close with a new format and quality of the ethno-jazz concert "Ethno+Jazz, vol.7" at the concert hall "Angārs" in the Tallinn Quarter, renewing a tradition that has already become a legend. The international big band will bring together students from the universities of Hamburg, Barcelona, Siena and Ferrara to perform new works by six Latvian jazz composers especially for this event.
The full program will be available on the deciBels Facebook page and the JVLMA website.