Younger than ever: About “Ring Ring 2023”
The twenty-seventh Ring Ring, an international festival of new music, was held in Belgrade, at the Jewish Cultural Center Oneg Shabbat and Studio 6 of Radio Belgrade, from May 17th to May 21st, 2023.
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For many years now, the Ring Ring festival has been starting preparations for its next edition even before the previous one has ended. It’s simple – there is a lot of good music and great musicians in the world, and since we can’t fit them all into one year, even if we had a huge budget at our disposal, it goes without saying that we’ll leave something for the next year. Or the one after that…
During the preparations for the 2022 festival, we came up with the idea that the focus of the next one, in 2023, should be on the youth, on the new generation of improvisers. Whether “youth” officially refers to those under 40 or 35 was one of the less important questions.
Already on the last day of the 26th festival, the performance was agreed upon by the ensemble that opened the 27th festival this year: the TiTiTi trio from Slovenia with Serbian pianist Marina Džukljev. Marina returned on the same day from Cerkno, where she performed for the first time with this trio at our fraternal festival (trio had previously performed at the Ciglana club in Belgrade a few days before, in front of us 12 enthusiasts in the audience).
As life often humorously dictates, it turned out that this first agreed concert happened precisely at the opening of this year’s festival, while the concert that closed the 27th Ring Ring – the trumpet duo of Leonel Kaplan and Franz Hautzinger – was the last one agreed upon, exactly three days before the start of the festival and just seven days before the concert took place! Yes, that’s also possible in Serbia.
But this is just a part of the story of the festival that has passionate followers among musicians, festival organizers, and also among those who support it, such as foreign cultural centres in Serbia, and increasingly local institutions that can financially support the festival.
What particularly satisfies us is that the audience is expanding. The venue at Jevrejska 16 has not been so full on festival evenings for a long time. This year, there were even ensembles completely unknown not only to our audience but also to the European audience, yet the ground floor of the hall was filled to the very entrance doors.
The excitement in the audience could be felt even at the announcement of the call for interested individuals to apply for the opening concert at Studio 6 of Radio Belgrade, where admission is free but due to limited seating, advance registration is required. It has never happened before that the registration process was halted so quickly… If it were possible, it seems that at least 50 more people would have come.
The reason for such increased interest is a special topic for study, but the festival with tradition has once again attracted audiences from Canada, Russia, Germany, Croatia, Italy… Additionally interesting is the fact that within just a month after the Ring Ring festival, three more events will take place in Serbia (two in Belgrade, one in Novi Sad), which will largely have a program that would suit our festival, with some of the artists having already performed at Ring Ring in previous years.
The tragedies that shook Serbia at the beginning of May left us all paralyzed. Tears, a lump in the throat… And the festival was supposed to start in less than two weeks. Despite all the difficulties, aware that there are people whose pain is immeasurably greater, cautiously and with a careful and unobtrusive campaign, we reached that opening on May 17th.
Radio Belgrade 3 has long been a place of freedom and new ideas, as well as an open space for collaboration. Since 2013, Ring Ring has been present in Studio 6 with its programs and concerts, in that special place for musicians and listeners/viewers. And when it comes to something the festival has been promoting from the very beginning – collaboration between local and foreign artists, and when that collaboration is so successful – it has provided us with new levels of enthusiasm for the rest of the festival.
From the second day, everything was moved to the location that both the audience and we, the organizers, love the most, because it is the true home of the Ring Ring festival – Jevrejska 16, now the Jewish Cultural Center Oneg Shabbat.
Even the change of sound engineer went smoothly, without delays or any complaints. When you hear the buzz from outside the building and when the hallway fills up with familiar and new faces patiently waiting to buy tickets, it’s clear that the audience knows well where and why they come. Not always knowing what kind of music will greet them, they come open-minded, full of trust.
On the second night, May 18th, the Austrian trio /kry took the stage, with only one album behind them and a small number of performances outside of Austria. Following them, the quartet named IRK Performing Reflection appeared on stage in the way the audience loves the most – acoustically, from the floor of the hall, in close contact with the audience.
The name of the band IRK Performing Reflection may not say much. Those willing to search the internet could find that the band is led by the young Croatian double bassist Ivar Roban Križić, who lives in Vienna, just like three-quarters of his bandmates. This year, Ivar had the opportunity to perform at three festivals, thanks to the EFFEA platform, which is intended to support and promote young European artists. In a broader context, the band performed at the Music Biennale in Zagreb in April, and after Ring Ring, they are scheduled to perform at the 80 Degrees festival – Laboratory for Innovative Art in Sofia in July.
For the Ring Ring Association, which organizes the festival of the same name, this was a great opportunity to participate in one more European project, as well as to collaborate with other major and significant festivals, and to meet new, young, extremely creative artists. One of them, trumpeter Nikola Vuković from Belgrade, has been hidden from our attention for years due to his studies in Graz and his jazz activities in Vienna. For both us and him, this was an opportunity to open up new possibilities for collaboration.
Joining the EFFEA platform and including the performance of IRK Performing Reflection in the program of the 27th Ring Ring festival may have been our venture of the year.
For the third evening, we knew it would be excellently attended, as one of the heroes of Ring Ring, Otomo Yoshihide, was coming to town. He has performed at the festival multiple times, and his concerts with the group Ground Zero (1997) and with Sachiko M and Toshimaru Nakamura (2000) are still talked about.
This time, in line with the main idea of this year’s festival, Otomo came with the young saxophonist and improviser Chris Pitsiokos, who lives and works in Berlin. Marina Džukljev drew our attention to Pitsiokos, as she increasingly spends time in Berlin, where she plays and records with local musicians, as well as one our “special advisor” from Berlin, who regularly attends concerts of this “ringring” kind of music.
We knew that the second concert of that evening, on May 19th, would meet the high expectations of the local audience. However, uncertainty regarding the first concert was sparked by the “Serbia Against Violence” protest, which gathered 60,000 people in Belgrade during the afternoon. There was concern that not everyone would be able to make it to the start of the evening after the protest, for the performance of Jesper Nordberg Trio. This ensemble had never performed outside of Sweden and Denmark before, and its two younger members were somewhat known to Serbian audience only through collaborations with some of our Roma musicians.
Despite everything, the hall was packed to the brim, and the great reaction of the audience carried the trio, whose debut album was released just two days before the performance, making their concert at Ring Ring their first opportunity for promotion.
Then came the expected auditory and visual assault – Pitsiokos and Yoshihide. It’s exciting to listen to them, but also to observe all the possible ways they produce sounds. Yoshihide on turntables / we haven’t seen that in Belgrade for 23 years! “Ring Ring style”…
Although ticket presales suggested that Saturday would be the least attended day, it turned out to be just a trick. Because the Ring Ring audience eagerly comes, often buying tickets on the spot. Moreover, each successful previous evening enhances the desire of attendees to come to the next concert.
One of the ideas that has guided us from the very beginning is supporting local musicians, promoting the local scene, as well as collaborating with other local projects, initiatives, and organizations. One such project, which has existed for several years and is mostly associated with the Ciglana club, is Muzika iz unutrašnjosti. This open project/band/initiative, led by Bratislav Radovanović and Branislav Radojković, both regular attendees of the Ring Ring festival, deserved an invitation, not only for their musical quality but also for their perseverance and enthusiasm to create a broader base for the further development of the contemporary and improvised music scene in Serbia through collaboration with local musicians.
Further strengthened by Ring Ring veteran, Aleksandar “Aca” Škorić, whose European reputation far surpasses his status in his homeland, Muzika iz unutrašnjosti attracted a large number of fans, friends, and curious individuals on the penultimate evening of Ring Ring, May 20th, who wanted to discover what lay behind such an unusual name. What they found was a furious free jazz energy, with heart and soul on the plate. The sextet sounded hot to the point of sizzling, with excitement in the audience. Viktor Kiš, a visual artist from Belgrade, joined in with a transistor, walking through scales and sounds.
Then, in the middle of the hall, Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler set up their synthesizers. The audience settled right next to them, quickly forming improvised concentric circles, and the quadraphonic sound setup added an extra attraction.
Interestingly, Lehn had only played on stage once before – with the Konk Pack trio in 2002 – and every subsequent time (there were three so far), he always played on the floor of the same hall.
The atmosphere in the lobby and outside the building was once again reminiscent of the years before Ring Ring’s temporary relocation to the Student Cultural Center (SKC): concerts, basketball, protests were being discussed, memories of previous festivals were being evoked, and CDs were being bought…
When it comes to merchandise, the largest merchandise booth ever at the festival was hosted by PoiL Ueda on the last night of the 27th edition, on May 21st. CDs, vinyl records, T-shirts, souvenirs – a true professional approach. Sales corresponded accordingly. However, there wouldn’t have been such extensive sales if the concert hadn’t been phenomenal. The incredible combination of the French alternative rock band and Japanese oral tradition was very attractive. Following their successful performance at WOMEX last year, this quintet has performed at several festivals on two continents during the 2023 tour so far.
And then, finally, there was the concert that had been labelled as a “Last Minute concert” just three days before the start of the festival. When you don’t know the budget until the beginning of the festival, organization can seem like alchemy. But we’ve been in this business for several decades… Ideas are never enough, and neither are great musicians. Especially those who want to perform at the festival. Franz Hautzinger had expressed a desire several months earlier to perform in Belgrade in the year he celebrates his 60th birthday. Surely, he didn’t expect our invitation to look like this:
(Sunday, May 14th, 2023)
“Hello Franz, are you available to perform at the festival next Sunday? We are unsure about the budget, but we’re hoping to have you play alongside Leonel Kaplan, the Argentinian trumpet player who lives here. You met him before, but you two haven’t played together yet, right?”
After a few minutes, enough to check his calendar, Franz replied: “Yes, I am coming! Can you fly me the day before?”
And so it was agreed. We had a world premiere for the festival closing, with two outstanding musicians. Spending time with them the previous evening was wonderful, and the concert… Or was it a performing act? Again, acoustic and again in the middle of the hall. What a way to end the festival!
