Ritual V

In the fifth Ritual, the strings will respond to other strings, the voice to the vibrations of instruments and space, and the two solo practices will lead to music developed together for more than two decades. It is music with a soothing sound and attentive listening.

Riparian means that which is riparian: arising at the junction of water and land, in a space of constant change. Eyvind Kang also uses the word as a name for his own improvisational practice and ecological listening. He plays the viola d'amore, an instrument equipped with additional resonant strings. Placed under the stringed strings and tuned in an original way, they respond to their vibrations, although the performer never directly touches them. In Krakow, Kang will play a new improvisation according to the rules developed on the album Riparian. The eponymous riparian becomes a clue to listen: the music reacts to the environment, changes course and allows the sounds triggered indirectly by the resonating strings to reveal themselves.

After Kang's performance, Jessica Kenney's Uranian Void will begin. If Riparian directs attention to the landscape, Kenney turns inward, treating sound as memory and vibration. In the aforementioned album, her voice meets hydrophone recordings, sine waves, gazelle (a lyric derived from 7th-century Arabic poetry) and instruments belonging to various tuning systems. During the concert, the artist will perform a twenty-minute selection of songs using her voice and some of the original instrumentation, including a sound bowl and a rim drum. The reverberation will become as important as the voice and the impact: the sound will remain in the air, disappear and return as an echo.

After the intervention of Jakub Ziółkowski, Kang and Kenney will take the stage together. They will perform two compositions from Azure, an album that is the fruit of more than twenty years of work together. The voice, viola d'amore and the bass background of the shruti box form in it what artists call “unison music”. This means mutual listening, in which two distinct voices begin to act in a common resonance. They remain recognizable, but it is already difficult to say which one leads and which one responds.

The finale will reveal the relationship present from the beginning: in the response of the strings, the vibration of the bowl, the memory of the voice and the attentiveness to the environment. The resonance will become a bond — something sounds because something else set it in motion.

The concert is co-organised by Cricoteka.

Availability:

The event will last about 70 minutes and will take place without interruption. Two twenty-minute solo performances will follow directly after each other. They will be followed by a ten-minute intervention by Jakub Ziółkowski and a twenty-minute performance by the duo.

The music will be mostly calm and based on long sounds, burdons, microtonal consonants, echoes and silence. There will be voice, string and percussion instruments and the continuous sound of shruti box.

The audience will sit around the central stage on cushions, poufs and carpet. Several chairs will also be available.

It is possible to leave the room during the event, but there will be no possibility to return.