In addition to the current project Sounds of Europe, Ring Ring Association recently became a partner in another European project – EFFEA. Thanks to the latter one, the 27th Ring Ring festival will host a concert by Croatian artist Ivar Roban Križić and his international ensemble. The concert will be held at the Jewish Cultural Center in Belgrade on May 18, 2023.
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A large number of international projects have been realized in the last fifteen years with special programs of the European Union to support culture, cooperation and exchange. In the period from 2010 to 2016, our Association participated in two such projects (Phonart and Euterpe). Since last year, the Association has been a partner in the four-year project “Sounds of Europe”, and this year we also joined the EFFEA project.
Someone, obviously, understood very well how important culture is, and therefore, recently, new programs have been constantly being designed to support culture and the mobility of artists. One of such projects is EFFEA (European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists), designed to support young artists, but also cooperation between festivals.
The advantages of this program are its frequency, faster decision-making by the center in Brussels, smaller and more operational budgets, focus on one artist or group…
In the implementation of the EFFEA project, in this particular case, three European festivals, three prestigious manifestations when it comes to new music, electronics, electroacoustics and avant-garde jazz will collaborate: Music Biennale Zagreb (Croatia), then 180° – Laboratory for Innovative Art (Bulgaria). and our Ring Ring festival.
The idea of the partnership of this part of the EFFEA program is to support the project of the young Croatian composer and double bass player Ivar Roban Križić, called IRK Performing Reflection.
This thirty-two-year-old artist will present his project first in Croatia, in Zagreb (April 17), then in Serbia, in Belgrade (May 18) and finally in Bulgaria, in Sofia (July).
In Belgrade, this IRK Performing Reflection line-up will perform: Ivar Roban Križić (double bass), Nikola Vuković (trumpet), Bojan Krhlanko (drums, percussion, electronics) and Thomas Grill (electronics).
It is an international team, made up of musicians from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Austria. The last-mentioned country, which regularly provides great support to artists, is also the meeting place for members of the IRK Performing Reflection project. Ivar Roban Križić himself is currently attending doctoral studies in Vienna, at the University of Music and Performing Arts.
In 2021, Ivar released his debut album “Sound” for “Cantus d.o.o.”, and the trumpet player Nikola Vuković also collaborates on the album. What could be extracted as the basic characteristic of Ivar’s artistic activity is sound and improvisation, even without that “and”.
“Both the musician-improviser and the listener should leave aside previously formed aesthetic judgments and institutionalized forms of knowledge in an attempt to reach a transient state of existence, an almost ritual connection with subconscious elements that open the way to improvised expression” – emphasizes Ivar – “In this sense, improvisation reveals openness to otherness, externalization and continuous self-transcendence. Through this process, we are in constant communication with ourselves, the tradition of our ancestors and the progress of our contemporaries. The sounds that arise as a result of these interactions fulfill a special need that goes beyond the purely musical: the sense of occasion and the ritual function associated with it are an attempt to create a microcosm”.
The performance of IRK Performing Reflection, at the 27th edition of the Ring Ring festival, will be held on May 18, 2023, at the Jewish Cultural Center, from 8 p.m. Information about tickets for this evening as well as for the entire festival will be available soon.
