Grisey, Sniady, and premieres

At the center of the program is Vortex Temporum by Gérard Grisey, a seminal work of spectral music. Grisey’s music examines extreme temporalities: the slow, expansive gestures of whales, the rapid, fleeting activity of insects, and the measured rhythms of human life. The result is a sound world that is at once organic and otherworldly, where time seems to stretch, compress, and fold in unexpected ways. Listening to it invites a different kind of attention — one attuned to the subtle shifts in resonance, texture, and color that emerge over long arcs of time.

Alongside Grisey, we will perform a new work by Marta Śniady, composed for Festival deciBels in Riga, organized by the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. Śniady’s music continues this exploration of time and gesture, creating spaces where sound can evolve organically and where each detail of texture and timbre contributes to the overall perception of duration.

The program also includes new pieces by composers from the Academy, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary music-making. These works reflect a curiosity about sound, movement, and listening, and they invite reflection on the ways we experience the present moment through music.

By bringing together established and emerging voices, this program is less about spectacle than about attentive listening. It asks us to inhabit sound in a different way — to notice its subtle shifts, its layers, and its rhythms — and to consider how music can make time itself tangible.