PLAYGROUND contemporary music concert series event
Two performers – two deeply personal relationships with their instruments. In the programs of Liudas Mockūnas and Artūras Kažimėkas, the saxophone and bass clarinet become not only instruments for performing music, but also unique tools for exploring sound and responding to space, breath, and electronics. Both artists weave distinct musical fabrics, guided by different yet equally personal creative impulses. They approach their instruments as living creative laboratories, interested not only in musical form, but also in how sound physically affects the body and activates the listener’s senses.
Liudas Mockūnas – “Hydro 3” (for water, overtone, and soprano saxophone)
Water as a source of life and energy, constant movement, sound, and imagery.
In the “Hydro” project, water becomes a musical instrument – or part of one. It transforms the timbre, opening up new sonic spaces: an experience in which the instrument begins to control the musician rather than the other way around, producing overtones and subtonal sounds instead of its natural voice. Water becomes a source of unique sounds, an inspiration for melodic and rhythmic lines, and at times even a dictator.
“Hydro is like a blank slate for me as an improviser – one that heightens my sense of hearing to the utmost and encourages me to respond to every aspect of a given situation: the acoustics, the audience, the space, ambient sounds, noise, and so on. It is like surrendering to a meditation whose direction is unknown in advance. The instrument and playing techniques become secondary; they are used more intuitively than consciously.
This concept is a personal return to the beginning – like an early human or a child delighting in the act of making sounds, or like the soul of a folk musician opening itself through sound. It is a unique narrative without words, replaced instead by the sounds and noise created by the musician and the instrument.” – Liudas Mockūnas
Artūras Kažimėkas – “i inhale the air and you”
Having an established reputation as a performer, for the first time, Artūras Kažimėkas, presents his solo programme “i inhale the air and you”. After many years of collaborating with forward-thinking composers and sound artists, exploring a wide range of aesthetic directions and performance techniques, Kažimėkas now offers his own unique perspective on the bass clarinet.
Taking up an instrument that has become an organic part of his physical experience, the performer likens playing to breathing – a process from which the essential contours of the programme emerge. Moving fluidly across the instrument’s range, incorporating voice as a timbral element, and using live electronics to process and layer sound, he creates a distinctive, meditative ambient space of near-suspended time, in which fragments of lived experience gradually surface.
6:00 PM | Liudas Mockūnas (60 min)
7:30 PM | Artūras Kažimėkas (45 min)
Producer: “Tarp tylos”
Curator: Arnas Kmieliauskas
Partners: Sapieha Palace, Lithuanian Composers’ Union
Media partners: LRT Klasika, “Radio Vilnius”
Sponsor: Baltic-American Freedom Foundation
Project funded by: Lithuanian Council for Culture, LATGA, Vilnius City Municipality