May is the Ring Ring month! The 28th edition of the prestigious Belgrade festival of new, different, experimental music is ahead of us, and will be held from May 23 to 26, 2024, at the Jewish Cultural Center and Zappa Baza. The organizer of the festival, the Ring Ring Association, promises four exciting musical evenings and a total of seven diverse concerts featuring artists and bands from the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, the USA, Turkey, and Serbia.
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Running an independent, alternative festival in Serbia is demanding and challenging work. Each year, you push that stone anew. Sometimes it seems that the uphill climb gets steeper with each passing year. On one hand, financial support is often undefined until the start of the festival, while there’s an increasing number of brilliant bands and musicians. They persistently apply and patiently wait. It appears as if they have more understanding of the situation than we do ourselves.
The program pieces of every “Ring Ring” are arranged according to the desire and necessity to introduce new and familiar names to the audience, both from the domestic and international scenes. However, there is, of course, too much phenomenal music on the planet for just one festival per year. But when that one festival arrives, and the audience fills the familiar space at Jevrejska 16, the organizers are simply ecstatic. And already then, they joyfully begin making a wish list for the next edition of the “Ring Ring” Festival.
The combination of debutants and artists known from previous festivals has reached one of its possible peaks this year. Thus, on the same evening, May 25, the legendary Dutch band The Ex, which has been around for 45 years, and the Istanbul-Belgrade TRIOBROK, which will soon celebrate its first anniversary, will perform.
The opening night, May 23, belongs to a long-awaited collaboration – the Belgrade band Fish in Oil has long admired Vienna’s, and our own Jelena Popržan, recognizable for her creative, alternative approach to instruments, voice, and composition. Their long-held dream comes true in full force this year.
Manja Ristić is another name in our festival program. For the first time, she performs at “Ring Ring”, to the great joy of organizers and audiences, bringing a completely fresh program. In the past few years, Manja, working from Korčula, distanced from all metropolises, has entered the circle of more significant sound explorers. On the same evening, May 24, we will hear another debutant of “Ring Ring”, performing in a solo performance: American experimenter Michael J. Schumacher brings his usual sound devices, including eight special speakers.
As it begins, the festival “Ring Ring 2024” will also end with concerts on the floor of the hall at the Jewish Cultural Center. On the last night, May 26, the Cologne trio C/W|N will perform, led by (again, our own) Dušica Cajlan, joined by the trio’s old acquaintance of festival audiences, Georg Wissel, and Dutch percussionist Etienne Nillesen. The last performance at this year’s festival belongs to the international Šalter Ensemble, which performed seven years ago in a slightly different lineup. In early May, they released a new album, “Tri dela”, on which the collective improvisation of this ten-member ensemble shows that for creative musicians, there are no obstacles to opening new collaborations and achieving an ever closer connection with the audience.
Tickets for the festival (individual and a festival pass) can be purchased via the Tickets.rs website, as well as through email at ringringfestival@gmail.com.
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🔗 Video teaser „Ring Ring Festival 2024”
🔗 Facebook Event „RING RING 2024”
🔗 Facebook Event „The Ex u Beogradu, na festivalu Ring Ring”
🔗 Tickets: Festival pass ǀ May 23 ǀ May 24 ǀ May 25 ǀ May 26
🔗 YouTube: Manja Ristić ǀ Šalter Ensemble ǀ The Ex