Sinozaur
Krists Auznieks, piano
Edgars Rubenis, guitar and gadgets
Pauls Pokratnieks, drums
Auris Bavarskis – electronics
Renato Ferreira – saxophone
Mikael Szafirowski – guitar
Vasco Trilla – drums
Sinozaur
Krists Auznieks, piano
Edgars Rubenis, guitar and gadgets
Pauls Pokratnieks, drums
Krists Auznieks is a composer of contemporary music currently studying in The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague with Peter Adriaansz and Guus Janssen. Krists comes from Riga, Latvia where he received his formal music education since early childhood being a part of the world touring Riga Dome Boys Choir and studying classical piano but in his teenage years venturing also into jazz.
As a natural consequence, Auznieks’s focus in music is related to voice and/or text; not only the enviroment rich in vocal tradition has shaped his interest, it has also inevitably given his music singing quality and breath. All that has resulted in a collaboration withLatvian Radio Chamber Singers, a piece 6 Saules Rieti for vocal ensemble Anima Sollawhich was a part of Riga a capella festival and a commission of a chamber opera for Riga – European Capital of Culture 2014 program. Currently he is also collaborating with Dutch Recorder Orchestra Praetorius on a piece that will be a part of their 50 year anniversary concert series.
Modality is an another major subject in Auznieks’s music. The explorations of it, caused by his necessity to transcend his background as a jazz pianist, are varying from intelligent jazz combos (Such as the piece Renunciation that was performed in Gaudeamus Young Composers Ball ) via the whole gamut of instrumental chamber and ensemble works to works employing electronics, theatrics and pieces of a more conceptual nature. Yet another exciting characteristic is his genuine interest in systematics and form and the many interconnected relationships between them.
Although his focus is mainly composition, he remains an active performer on the Holland’s and Latvia’s improvised music scene. He is a part of Brendan Faegre Edge Ensemble, exploring new possibilities of combining composed and improvised material, a member of DaMu, ensemble which experiments with sound and movement in space and an experimental free improv group Sinozaur.
Krists has taken part in an improvisation project week with Butch Morris; a collaboration project among the major European conservatoires European Impro Intensive 2012, studying with pianist Agusti Fernandez; BrokkenFabriek workshop series with Robert Van Heumen and Anne La Berge; YouME, an international project around Jazz and improvised electronic music in Rome, Warzsaw and The Hague.
Edgars Rubenis is a guitar player and composer of electronic music. His music is expressive and intense. as a freshly charged 9V battery. When collaborating with others it’s often free improv. when performing on his own it’s slow and dense. striving towards emptiness. He studies at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague.
Pauls Pokratnieks is a jazz and other improvised music style drummer and composer. He took his first steps in music field at age 6 when enrolled in music school in Riga, Latvia. There he studied classical percussion instruments (marimba and orchestra instruments), as well as piano, theory, solfeggio and music literature. Up until the age of 18 he actively performed in various local and international orchestras and took first prizes in competitions. At the age of 16 Pauls began to play drum set and had first interests in jazz music. At the age of 18 he enrolled in the Riga Dome Choir School (RDCS) in the Jazz department, and there started to deeply study drums, jazz theory, harmony, bass, composition and other subjects. After graduating RDCS in 2009 Pauls decided to continue his music studies in Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. Now he is in first year of his Master studies. Pauls have performed with various improvised music ensembles internationally (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Cyprus andThe Netherlands). Now he is more focused on composing music for his own band and working as freelance musician in The Netherlands.
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Auris Bavarskis – live electronics
Aurimas Bavarskis is a musician and media technologist tackling concepts of data conversion, translation and its meaning in the context of different media.
“Where am I” is an artistic take on A. Bavarskis’s ongoing research (topic: Data Music) which explores possible ways to create musical structures by generating and combining data-modulated signals, which can be analysed and decoded by a machine interpreter.
About any possible data can be represented by an endless number of representational systems and travel through various media. “Where am I” raises questions such as “can anything be represented in musical and visual languages”, “what is the relationship between information and the physical representation of it”, “does information change its meaning after conversion from abstract domain to the physical one”.
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Renato Ferreira – saxophone
Mikael Szafirowski – guitar
Vasco Trilla – drums
“Vasco, Mika and Renato; drums, guitar and saxophone. All the directions are a possibility for the music. The trust of the musicians in each-other can be heard as strong as a the heart of a predator in a jungle of sounds and energy.”