by Bojan Đorđević | 13.11.2023.
The second Pocket Globe festival was held in Novi Sad, from November 9 to 11, 2023, at different locations. The program included six concerts, a workshop, a musician’s session, a presentation and two lectures.
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When the idea was conceived in 2021 to turn the series of concerts called “Pocket Globe” into a permanent festival event in Novi Sad, we announced that it would not be an action related only to the year of the “European Capital of Culture”. Because the world music festival is needed in Novi Sad, both because of the curious audience and the fact that members of a large number of peoples live together and very harmoniously in the city, and because of the extremely rich local music scene. In accordance with that idea, we have built a concept in which we are slowly including Novi Sad musicians, cultural workers, concert venues, the media, but also those young and the youngest people.
This year, a part of the city’s new cultural hub, SKCNS Fabrika, was chosen as the central concert venue. In the end, the choice turned out to be excellent.
Although this space may be famous as a place where rock or punk music is played, in cooperation with excellent sound technicians, we have enabled the audience to enjoy the concerts, which are world music, but with rock elements, as was the case on the first night, and turning space into the hall for real chamber concerts, which characterized the second evenings. Again, on the third evening, there was enough room for those who wanted to sit and enjoy the music, as well as for those who were driven to dance by the same music.
The organizing team, in cooperation with volunteers from Novi Sad, technicians, also with the help of friends of the festival and the understanding of the city’s institutions that reduced the prices of their services, realized second very successful festival, with six concerts, two lectures, one presentation, a musician’s session and a workshop.
Certainly the headliner of the festival was Bombino, an artist from Niger, whose latest album was released just two months before the festival and who included Novi Sad in the program of his European tour.
At the premiere concert in Serbia, Bombino showed how great an artist he is, but also a humble person, approachable for conversations with the audience after the concert.
The Belgrade-based band The Cyclist Conspiracy, who released their debut album for an Italian label a month before the festival, fit perfectly into the program of this first evening.
Although Bombino was the biggest name of the festival, the Czech artist Iva Bittova had the most intense contact with the audience. First of all, on the festival’s first day, during the workshop with members of the Children’s Opera Studio of the Serbian National Theatre created exceptional communication with the youngest and showed a desire to continue this cooperation. The children, together with their parents, the following evening, with the invitation of Iva and the organizers, came in large numbers to the concert, which introduced them and the large audience into an incredible atmosphere, at the end of which Iva Bittova and her collaborator Vladimir Vaclavek sang an encore together with the audience.
The second evening was opened by Serbian artist Jasna Jovićević (feat. Bojan Bojić), with the program “Illusion of Freedom”, premiered on this occasion. Before the concert, Jasna was awarded with the “Vojin Mališa Draškoci” award, which has been awarded for years by the World Music Association of Serbia to those artists who creatively combine tradition and world music with other musical genres.
On the last evening, the Slovakian group Nogaband, led by violin virtuoso and researcher Michal Noga, performed first, which was a great opportunity to hear traditional music performed in a very authentic way. Italian artist Stefano Saletti with his band Banda Ikona had the premiere concert in Serbia that evening, presenting Stefano’s vision of the Mediterranean, along with the story of the extinct Mediterranean language – Sabir. Saletti, on the same day, held a successful and well-attended lecture on this contact language in the Zenit bookstore.
In addition to the concerts and the aforementioned lecture and workshop, the festival included several additional events: the lecture “Rich and vital, old music of Slovakia” by Michal Noga in the Zenit bookstore (10.11), a session by Vladimir Vaclavek with local musicians at the Petrovaradin Fortress (10.11), as well as the presentation of the “Creative Europe – Culture” program in cooperation with the Creative Europe Desk Serbia, also in the Zenit bookstore (11.11).
by Bojan Đorđević | 25.09.2023.
The eleventh Todo Mundo festival was held in Belgrade at different locations from September 21 to 23, 2023. The program included five concerts, one DJ gig, an international conference and a public conversation with two members of the Hungarian group Erdőfű.
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The eleventh edition of the Todo Mundo festival was fully in line with the basic idea set at the very beginning, in 2012 – an intriguing and diverse concert and accompanying program, which corresponds to the challenge and diversity of the world music polygenre, an entertaining, artistic, research and educational approach, and close contact with the audience.
Although the campaign for the 11th edition started earlier than ever, the three days of the festival flew through us with great speed and intensity that gave a new, driving energy.
When it was announced at the end of 2022 that September 23 was chosen as the European Folk Day, we immediately started to plan performances for that day by two ensembles, which fit perfectly into the first celebration of this important date. We hosted both groups – Erdőfű (Hungary) and Janusz Prusinowski Kompania (Poland) thanks to the international project “Sounds of Europe”, in which our Ring Ring Association is a partner and part of a team with 12 other festivals from 10 European countries.
Then, during the arrangement of Bombino’s performance in Novi Sad (Pocket Globe festival), the possibility arose to arrange Vieux Farka Touré’s gig in Belgrade with the same agent. The concert of Alba Carmona was essentially discussed during a joint bus trip with her agent to Naples and the Napoli World festival.
When you make such a program, then imagine and ask yourself: “Does the audience in Serbia know these musicians? How popular is Vieux really or is it just known for his famous father Ali Farka Touré? Is flamenco popular enough to fill the hall? How attractive is the traditional music of Hungary and Poland to the local audience?”
It was awaiting its confirmation in September. Only two unknowns remained when we started the campaign: Which of the local artists to include in the programme and, of course, what the last-minute budget would be, that chronic pain of most events in Serbia.
We chose DJ Killo Killo, our internationally most famous world music DJ, fan and connoisseur of African music, as the local artist. We considered this as a more than appropriate solution for the continuation of the evening after Vieux Farka Touré’s concert, in the Zappa Baza club, with which we now cooperated for the first time.
That choice for the opening of the festival (September 21) turned out to be a complete success. The audience responded in large numbers, both younger and older, including several legends of Belgrade music journalism. All of them together confirmed that the music of Mali easily provokes all generations to dance. Despite all that, cooperation with a world star, as Vieux certainly is, was not at all complicated. Vieux and his musicians are polite, simple and cordial in their conversations with the media and the audience (we think they spent two markers signing records and discs).
The following evening (September 22), the return to our longtime venue, the Jewish Cultural Center, presented a new challenge. Will the two different audiences – flamenco lovers and accordion fans – completely be separated or will the quality and intriguing music make everyone stay in the hall for both concerts? And yes, to our joy, exactly the second thing happened. Belofour, the Austrian accordion quartet, also nailed the flamenco fans to the chairs, only for Alba Carmona and Jesús Guerrero to keep them there with ease, and finally get them back on their feet.
The European Folk Day itself was marked with several activities during the third, and last day of the festival (September 23). In addition to the evening performances of the groups Erdőfű and Janusz Prusinowski Kompania, good acquaintances from the international scene, during the day, another in the series of international music conferences, which we organize for the third year in a row as part of the Todo Mundo festival, was held in the RTS Club – Radio Belgrade Gallery.
The topic, quite appropriate “Tradition nowadays, in the World Music”, imposed itself, with the participation of experts, musicians, organizers and scholars from six European countries: Daina Zalāne, Márton Éri, Marija Dumnić Vilotijević, Alba Carmona, Janusz Prusinowski, Ana Sors, Mirjana Raić Tepić, Soma Salamon, Joanna Wiedro-Żak, as well as permanent hosts, organizers of the “Todo Mundo” festival, Marija Vitas and Bojan Đorđević.
In addition to this addition to the program, the festival, as in 2022 and 2016, in cooperation with the Department of Ethnomusicology of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, offered a talk by Soma Salamon and Márton Éri with professors and students, on the topic of Hungarian traditional music, tanchaz, the heritage of Transylvania etc.
This time too, the volunteers contributed, and the media supported us quite strongly.
As it was every year, the freshly realized festival is the impetus for us to start creating the next edition and to attract a new and younger audience, but also to promote the festival all over the world, both at festivals, conferences, and through social networks.
by Bojan Đorđević | 23.05.2023.
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!
by Bojan Đorđević | 26.09.2022.
The tenth Todo Mundo world music festival was held in Belgrade, from September 21 to 24, 2022, at different venues. The program included eight concerts, an international conference, a street parade and a public talk with the artist Džambo Agušev.
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World music in Serbia is a rare species. Easy to receive, difficult to maintain. Musically speaking, it is the most exportable local musical product, at least as it has been shown in the last 25 years. The number of festivals (in Serbia) that have this polygenre as dominant in their program is growing year by year. On the other hand, the number of local audio releases per year rarely reaches the number 10, the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information is reserved for some other genres, and local musicians struggle to decide between surviving and the long-term fight for a place on the European market.
And how to set up and maintain a world music festival then? A festival that should be both a show-window of local culture and a window into (another, better) world.
With such thoughts, we started preparations for the jubilee, tenth edition of the festival, at the already (finally) fixed date – at the end of September. The questions we asked ourselves were: how to make a rich program, with support received through international projects and foreign cultural centers, and be fresh, somewhat different from the others; how to present local groups; how to attract a younger audience…
How well we succeeded will be judged by the musicians, the audience, and colleagues from Europe. But also by our inner one, which has been driving us for years to make a festival regardless of all the problems and to enjoy the concerts at the same time. Here I don’t mean only on our team, but on all dear people who organize similar festivals in Serbia. Enthusiasm as fuel.
We welcomed the first guests fully prepared, although already sleep-deprived. Several novelties were already introduced before the beginning of the festival – a long-term campaign on social networks, preparation of volunteers from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, billboards in several places in the city… We also started cooperation with the visual artist Vuk Maksimović (aka unk_anth), whose three totems and two masks formed the scenography of the concert evenings at JCC.
The beginning itself was a novelty – a street music parade (September 21). For that, there is no better band than the Dzambo Aguševi Orchestra from North Macedonia. Because they do it at numerous festivals around the world, so why not in Belgrade as well. This time they were joined by members of Fanfara Station, an international trio based in Italy.
The weather served us well, people passing by received flyers and their own piece of excellent music. There were also those who walked the entire path with us… Džambo led his orchestra as if at a specific concert, everything flowed spontaneously, without intermission between songs.
Having this orchestra at a festival is a serious matter, not only because they are great, but also because they are very, very busy. Džambo also made several interviews, and he also had a talk with students and professors of the Department of Ethnomusicology of the Faculty of Music. And what a talk… Maestro was inspired, talkative, cordial and open. And then, that same day, later, after terrible downpours and the delay of the entire festival evening due to technical problems with the amplifier, he nailed in the Garden of the Drugstore Club. But, exactly!
They have made great progress in the last three years, so they are never monotonous, not for a second. After such a groove, it would be difficult for anyone else to perform. But not Fanfara Station, who didn’t mind either the coldness (band leader Marzouk Mejri is Tunisian), or the fact that their concert started at 11 p.m., when many are already looking to catch the last night ride towards home.
A powerful performance, and it’s a shame that more people didn’t see them until the end. However, that evening (September 22) also showed what we felt during other evenings – a new and younger audience is coming to world music concerts. This was especially evident on the last evening (September 24).
But let’s go back to the concert beginning of the festival – for the first time, concerts at the Todo Mundo festival were held in the Jewish Cultural Center. This was a test for the audience and for us. The former Cultural Centre Rex has been home to the Ring Ring festival for decades, whose audience trusts the organizer and comes regardless of whether they’ve heard of the band performing that night.
When it comes to Todo Mundo – we moved it too often and until we settle at one venue, the audience won’t settle either. But the scene was beautiful, three hardworking volunteers, Emilia, Marta and Filip fit in easily and were very helpful. And on stage – Brdarići, sister and brother, Bojana and Nebojša, with the band. It’s a nice feeling to stick to the custom of local artists opening the festival with their performance. It is clear that Brdarići, due to their preoccupation with various other jobs, will have to think carefully about where they want to go – the potential is there, the singing and playing skills are there as well.
Jako el Muzikante – a fictional character created by the Spaniard Xurxo Fernandes, sings and plays (in a trio) Sephardic music. As Acart would emphasize – “in the Jewish Cultural Center, in Jevrejska Street”. After the concert, Xurxo and Stefan Sablić (the leader of the local Sephardic group Shira utfila) sang together in the hall. What a picture! Music that is rarely heard here (um, maybe that could have been the theme of the festival). Because on the third night, the Austrian duo Ramsch & Rosen dug deep into Austrian traditional music, which we also rarely hear.
A special issue was Dunja Knebl, the oldest participant. She performed as the winner of the Award “Vojin Mališa Draškoci”, in a duo with half a century younger Roko Margeta. Warm, immediate, she wrapped us (the few of us who did not go to see Manu Chao that evening) in the atmosphere of traditional songs of several countries.
The next morning we chatted cheerfully, learning that she used to live in Belgrade, and that she visited the place where “Jugotehna” company used to be, where she worked. And her speech at the “Music on the move” conference (September 24) was cheerful and heartfelt.
After all, the whole conference had passed in a pleasant way, like a conversation and an exchange of opinions, but during which you learn a lot.
Both Dea and Lea from the Perija group were with us then, to tell another unusual story. About the travels and performances in unusual places, of the band which is growing and growing. Whose concert on the same evening filled the Jewish Cultural Center. Admittedly, they were helped wholeheartedly by Meybahar, the Hungarian-Greek band, who opened the last festival night. And they surprised us – their repertoire is made up of Greek traditionals, excellently arranged and performed. This was one more opportunity to realize that bands are the ones who can make a key contribution to promotion, if only they deliver all the necessary material on time. This kind of Meybahar will have more and more fans.
And finally the Perija Quartet. For more than a year, now 18-year-old Ognen, one of the discoveries of the festival, has been with them. They bravely performed the repertoire from their upcoming album, which will be released not before next year. It is obvious that they have young fans who follow their work. From the first song, a few got up and danced until the end of the concert.
Is Perija “the next big thing”? We cannot guarantee it, but that they are on a serious upward trajectory, that is clear. That they will come to Serbia often is already clear from the invitations of several festivals for 2023!
That last evening brings us back to the aforementioned fuel, which sometimes needs to be topped up. Evenings like this – with two great concerts, with a full hall, a new, young audience, promising volunteers, smiles and praise from the musicians – fatigue fades under a new burst of positive energy.
Those vibes lead us first to the Pocket Globe festival in Novi Sad, which is also organized by us from the Ring Ring Association, and will carry us to the next, eleventh edition of the Todo Mundo festival.
by Bojan Đorđević | 31.05.2022.
The twenty-sixth edition of the Ring Ring, Belgrade’s festival of new, avant-garde, experimental, improv and free jazz music, ended on May 26, 2022, at the Jewish Cultural Center. That evening, Phil Minton and Szilárd Mezei performed as did Echo Pointers quartet.
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It is an incredible feeling when the preparations for the twenty-sixth edition of Ring Ring Festival, just six months after the previous, jubilee edition, result not only in the expected good concerts but also in a fantastically dedicated, numerous audience and great atmosphere.
As previously, the 25th edition of the festival was postponed three times due to a pandemic and concert restrictions, and finally performed at the end of 2021, we were wondering if it makes sense for this year’s edition to be in the usual May term. But the dilemma did not last long.
As many times before, the desire to present innovative musicians and their sound creations to the audience nullifies any doubt. In the end, thanks to the support from various sides, we achieved another great festival, with ten concerts in five evenings. However, it is divided into two parts, between which three days have passed, but it is intense and surrounded by a real festival atmosphere.
Those who failed to reach the Jewish Cultural Center “Oneg Shabbat” and the Drugstore Club are sure to hear these days about what they missed. From the re-appearance (now double) of drummer Tony Buck in front of the Belgrade audience, in two different and great duos, to the world premiere of the Echo Pointers quartet, according to the age of its members of the youngest band at the festival.
When we started thinking about the program, the only sure thing was the trio Gordan – whose fresh debut album (“Down in the Meadow” / Morphine Records, 2021) set new boundaries in the fusion of alternative and traditional music – as well as the duo Phil Minton and Szilárd Mezei, planned for last year, but also cancelled before the 25th festival, for justified reasons.
But, as always, offers began to arrive that we could not refuse. The DDK trio (Jacques Demierre, Axel Dörner, Jonas Kocher) flew in like an ace at eleven. The proposal to host a local trio of Predrag Okiljević, Marko Čurčić and Aleksandar Škorić, in a special project Echo Pointers with Finnish saxophonist Adele Sauros, relied heavily on our concept of giving local musicians the opportunity to present their collaborations with foreign guests. Ever since Drugstore gave the idea that Rabih Beaini, the owner of the Morphine Records label (for which the album was released by Gordan), would perform the same night as Gordan, the skeleton of the 26th Ring Ring program was clear.
At that time, however, the budget of the festival was not yet known, but we have already contacted some of the desired performers, just in case, with a request to wait for the final decision. Some wanted to, but as the wait dragged on, they had to buy their tickets for a flight across the Atlantic and meet another audience there. And just then, about a month and a half before the festival, the great Canadian orchestra GGRIL (with which a performance was agreed in 2020, but, of course, could not be realized), with the message: “We are coming to Europe, count on us”. Our answer was: “Oops… And, money?”, to which GGRIL replied: “If there is, great, if not, we are definitely coming”.
We have already had such cases in the history of the festival… Musicians who create this, different music, have an approach that gives you new energy and easily accept them as your own – warm and professional. As the budget was confirmed only on April 29, the program was closed and announced only two weeks before the start of the festival. It seemed that we had too little time for promotion, but when everyone in the team does their job with so much enthusiasm, the result was seen on the first night of the festival.
The Jewish Cultural Center, which most of us still call Rex, had the atmosphere we remember from 10 years ago – radiant faces, crowds at the entrance, a line for buying tickets, chatting about the program, great performances … The audience and the media will write and talk about music and impressions …
From our point of view, it seemed unreal. The audience was extremely dedicated, the concerts were memorable, and the musicians were immensely satisfied. After a one-night trip to the Drugstore club, where the garden was opened with this part of the festival program, we returned to Jevrejska 16 on Saturday, again with the same schedule – acoustic band on the floor, next to the audience, and then more sounded and louder on stage.
The Quebec GGRIL (14 stress-free musicians despite a long European tour and constant unpacking and packing of complete equipment) was followed by The Fruitful Darkness. It was the return of the Italian saxophonist Gianni Gebbia in front of the Belgrade audience after 24 years, this time in a duo with the “inevitable” Tony Buck. An explosion of enthusiasm in the audience and enthusiastic comments in front of the JKC building rounded off this evening.
After a break of three days (let’s add that weather also served us), it couldn’t have started better. We first listened to one of the most important improvisers of our time, Joëlle Léandre and her double bass. It’s hot in the hall, but no one comes out – listening carefully has obviously become a recognizable feature of the Ring Ring audience, which is why Joëlle herself was delighted after the concert. She gladly joined in the conversations with the visitors, she sold out all the CDs, but she also returned to the hall when the concert of the Jasna Jovićević Quinary started.
This is another characteristic of these creative artists – the desire to hear others, to discover, to make contact. It is wonderful to see them in the audience and how before or after their own performance they follow the creation of their colleagues, known or unknown.
Jasna Jovićević presented, for the first time in the region, her quintet and music from the last two albums. Great gig.
On the last evening, there were a lot of FMU students in the audience, who attended the previous evenings in a slightly smaller number. Nataša Penezić, pianist and professor at the Piano Department, encouraged her students to come to the twenty-sixth edition of the Ring Ring and discover something new. We met their needs and allowed everyone to attend the concerts for free. Because it’s nice to have enthusiasm spread.
Last year’s agreed, but unrealized performance of vocal improvisation veteran Phil Minton and our improviser Szilárd Mezei once again nailed the audience to their chairs, even though it was even warmer in the hall.
During the break, but also after the second concert (Echo Pointers), in front of the entrance to the building, enthusiastic musicians debated, who played at the festival this or previous years, and with them the audience… It is difficult to accept that the festival is over and we should go home.
The festival was organized by the Ring Ring Association from Belgrade, with the help of the Music Information Centre of Serbia.
