The leading regional festival of new and improvised music, Ring Ring – which was declared the Festival of Regional Importance for 2021 a few days ago, according to the selection of the magazine “Muzika Klasika” – awaits us in its regular May term. The 26th Ring Ring will be held in Belgrade, at the Jewish Cultural Center and the Drugstore Club, from May 19 to 26, 2022.
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When the first Ring Ring festival began at the Rex Cultural Center on May 23, 1996, we could only hope that the festival would last for more than a quarter of a century. The list of over 350 concerts held over the past 26 years could be labeled as: “Who’s Who in Innovative Music”. Fortunately, the list of artists and art projects shows a tendency towards infinity, so the organizers of the Ring Ring festival easily draw inspiration and energy to design a quality program every year.
This year, the program includes 5 concert evenings, with the participation of musicians from 12 countries and it’s gonna happen only 6 months after the jubilee, 25th edition of the festival, held at an unusual time in November due to the situation with the pandemic at the time. Last year, the festival returned to where its life began – in Jevrejska 16, in the former Rex, today’s Jewish Cultural Center “Oneg Shabbat”, but it was also held at the Drugstore club. Both locations will also host the 26th edition of the Ring Ring.
This year, the focus is also on cooperation between local and foreign artists. The Gordan trio consists of Berlin musicians Guido Möbius and Andy Stecher and Serbian singer Svetlana Spajić. Their last year’s debut album “Down in the Meadow” has already found a place on several world music charts. The owner of “Morphine Records”, which released the album, Rabih Beaini will perform the same evening as a DJ (formerly artistic name: DJ Morphosis). That whole night will be enriched by several local DJs’ sets by the morning, in the popular Drugstore club.
The performances of Phil Minton and Szilard Mezei, as well as the Echo Pointers quartet, at the Ring Ring are part of their premiere, May tours, which ends right with performances at the final evening of the Ring Ring festival.
The quintet of composer and multi-instrumentalist Jasna Jovićević, that consists of well-known local musicians, is also a local trump card. Jasna delighted the audience with her trio at the “Belgrade Jazz Festival”, 2021, and this will be an opportunity to present a new, five-member band to the Belgrade audience.
Among the main stars of this year’s festival is Joëlle Léandre, the leading French and world double bass player in the field of avant-garde and improvised music. Although she has been performing for almost half a century, Joëlle is still extremely popular at festivals around the world. She performed at the Ring Ring only in the festival’s introductory event, in 2009, as a musician in the play “Sho-Bo-Gen-Zo” by Jozsef Nadj.
Another music veteran at the 26th Ring Ring is the already mentioned English singer Phil Minton, also a good acquaintance of the Belgrade audience.
Drummer Tony Buck (member of the trio The Necks) is coming to Belgrade again, but this time as a member of two duos – one with guitarist Andy Moore (The Ex) and the other with Italian saxophonist Gianni Gebbia.
The spectacle at the 26th Ring Ring will certainly feature a concert by the fourteen-member band GGRIL from Montreal.
The festival will be opened by the DDK Trio (Jacques Demierre / Axel Dörner / Jonas Kocher), and will be closed by the Echo Pointers quartet, in which three of our young musicians from Novi Sad will be joined by Adele Sauros from Finland.
The festival was supported by: Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Goethe Institute in Belgrade, Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade, Pro Helvetia, Cantons of Geneva and Bern, City of Bill / Bien, Canadian Arts Council, Quebec Arts and Literature Council, Embassy of Finland in Belgrade, Jewish Cultural Center “Oneg Shabbat”, Drugstore, RadioAparat and škart.
The festival is organized by the Ring Ring Association from Belgrade, with the help of the Music Information Centre of Serbia.
Tickets for the 26th Ring Ring can be purchased from Saturday, May 7, on the website and tickets.rs stores, as well as at the Jewish Cultural Center and the Drugstore Club during the festival. The ticket price is 500 dinars per night, and a set of tickets costs 2,100 dinars. A special note refers to the evening at the Drugstore Club. Namely, buying a ticket for this evening at the price of 500 dinars, requires coming to the very beginning of the evening (concert of Gordan), with the possibility of attending all further events, because that ticket is valid for an all-night party. If you miss that first concert, you have to pay 300 dinars more at the entrance to Drugstore, because the price for the concert of Rabiah Beaini and the subsequent performances of local DJs is 800 dinars.
