ECAS Member

Skaņu Mežs Association
Riga, Latvia
Festival: Skaņu Mežs

”The main function of Skaņu Mežs/Sound Forest association is to organize an annual festival, sound art exhibitions and educational activities relating to innovative music and related visual arts. It is all done with an international perspective in sight – one of Skaņu mežs’ main aims is to bring Latvian innovative music into the fore of the European cultural realm and to vitalize the culture life of Riga and make it a more pleasant city to live in.

Another task that we fulfill by organizing the festival is to stimulate creative innovation in Latvia and the Baltic region. That is being facilitated by the fact that Skaņu mežs festival is the main, longest running and most regular innovative music festival in the Baltic region.
Recently Skaņu mežs has alo launched its own record label and so far plans to publish recordings by cutting-edge artists from the Latvian experimental music scene.”

About Skaņu Mežs Festival

It’s been more than ten years since the first Skaņu Mežs (“Sound Forest”) festival took place in 2003, but a question repeatedly voiced by festival goers is – what is the festival’s purpose? Briefly – Skaņu Mežs is organised both to give an overview of the latest developments within modern music as well as to nurture an ongoing chain of interesting musical events in Riga, Latvia.

Skaņu Mežs is a music festival which has as its goal to widen the audience’s horizons, and to offer alternatives to dominant views on culture. The events can be seen as an opportunity for people to detach themselves from their mundane and everyday comfort zones, in this way refreshing their perspective on the world.

This doesn’t, however, mean that the Skaņu Mežs’ repertoir is purposefully complicated or contrary. Quite the opposite, as even though the festival is a platform for adventuorus music, it also includes performers whose work is perhaps more accessible, thus providing entry points also for listeners who do not associate themselves with the avant-garde. The festival doesn’t focus on a certain musical genre or category, but rather on the search for new languages in music and sound.

An additional dimension of Skaņu Mežs’ activities is a string of exhibitions, devoted to audiovisual art and sound art in particular.

Skaņu Mežs is the co-founder and member of International Cities of Advanced Sound (ICAS) and the SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art.

ECAS stages

Skaņu Mežs 2011
ECAS Working Period 2 / 16.09. - 18.09.2011
Skaņu Mežs 2012
ECAS Working Period 2 / 06.10. - 13.10.2012
Skaņu Mežs 2013
ECAS Working Period 3 / 07.09. - 27.10.2013
SKAN II - 2014 - Riga
sound art exhibition / 31.05. - 24.08.2014
Skaņu Mežs 2014
ECAS Working Period 4 / 10.10. - 11.10.2014

ECAS Member Overview