DARK LIGHT // ARĒNA 2026

Featuring: Woodpecker Project: Andris Dzenītis, Gatis Zaķis, Ritvars Garoza (electronics), Arvīds Kazlausks (saxophones) and JVLMA students

Program: Works by Woodpecker Project and students of the JVLMA Composition Department

The second evening of the ARĒNA new music festival is devoted to intriguing new works. This two-part program brings together the spirit of youth and the wisdom of maturity, fearsome darkness and refreshing light. The newest compositions by students of the Composition Department of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and the latest program by Woodpecker Project, which was launched twenty years ago, will be heard. Classical instruments intertwine with electronic echoes, and the lights of the spotlights are replaced by a plunge into the mysterious depths of darkness.

In the musicians' collective Woodpecker Project, founded by Andris Dzenītis, Ritvars Garoza, Arvīds Kazlausks and Gatis Zaķis have also been performing for several years. The performance of this quartet, "...fears", invites the audience on a special sonic adventure in a completely dark environment, in order to overcome fear, listen to the darkness and believe in its kindness: "Fear of the dark is genetically embedded in us. Since the beginning of humanity, darkness has been associated with the unknown, in it an enemy could lurk, dangerous beasts could be hiding, and in an archetypal sense, death itself. But does what we do not see really exist in the dark? Does an environment exist if we have never seen it before? Hearing is the only one of our senses that is constantly in a state of attention and concentration. In darkness and uncertainty, it allows what is perceived to be visualized, given form and translated into another sensory language. When nothing distracts us, we can fully immerse ourselves in sound. In darkness, sound gains a special power - it can caress and comfort, shimmer and captivate, carrying us away on a vast fantasy journey dreamed up within ourselves."

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ARĒNA is a contemporary music festival that has, since 2002, every autumn brought together composers of new music, performers and listeners from many countries of the world in Latvian concert halls. The festival motto HEAR THE FUTURE! contains the festival's main idea and goal - to present the diversity of contemporary music in all its splendor, encouraging the creation, performance and documentation of new music.

This year, from October 27 to November 13, ARĒNA will take place for the 25th time, inviting audiences to encounter light and darkness, faith and fear, prophecies and myths, silence, electronics and unheard sounds in five concerts. The festival will open with the Peteris Vasks Quartet, performing music by Peteris Vasks, Arvo Pärt and Olivier Messiaen, and it will close with one of ARĒNA's most ambitious events - the premiere of Gundega Šmite and Dimitris Maronidis' chamber opera "The Abduction of Europe". Also especially anticipated are two world premieres in the concert "Prophecies" - new works by Klaus Lang and Santa Bušs. Composer Santa Bušs is also opening a new chapter in the festival's history this autumn by becoming ARĒNA's artistic director.

As one of Latvia's longest-running new music festivals, ARĒNA has never stopped searching for what will come next in music. This autumn, that forward-looking gaze also takes on a dimension of mystery and premonition. The festival invites you to look into a world where the known meets the unknown, light meets darkness, and reality meets myth: from spiritual light and trust in God in the music of Peteris Vasks, Arvo Pärt and Olivier Messiaen to the allure of darkness, fear and the unpredictability of electronic sound; from prophecies and ritual to Morton Feldman's fragile, almost weightless soundscape. At the festival's conclusion, myth will enter our own time in the chamber opera "The Abduction of Europe", bringing the ancient story face to face with Europe today.

Four ARĒNA concert evenings will take place at Riga Reformed Church, while the festival's closing event, the premiere of the chamber opera "The Abduction of Europe", will be held at Hanzas Perons. All concerts begin at 7:00 PM.

More: arenafest.lv

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