One of Europe's most important new music festivals, the 47th Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, kicks off next weekend in the UK. It will culminate the first phase of a three-year partnership with Lithuania and begin a new phase of expanding and deepening cooperation.

The partnership with the festival, which has become an international professional networking platform, abbreviated as "hcmf//", is implemented by the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, Cultural Attaché to the United Kingdom Ūla Tornau, and Music Information Centre Lithuania.

Bringing more value to the music ecosystem

"This culmination of a rich and growing partnership with Lithuania is the perfect opportunity to announce that it will be extended for another three years until 2028! My sincere thanks to our Lithuanian partners for their continued belief in hcmf// as an international platform to promote Lithuanian artists working in the field of new music in the UK and worldwide," said the festival's Artistic Director, Graham McKenzie.

"When we signed this partnership agreement three years ago, it contained lines defining not only concerts but also aspiration for exchange and collaboration. It is incredibly gratifying to see that all this has already turned into real work, bringing together Lithuanian and UK artists, festivals and other partners. It is particularly gratifying that at this point we have been able to create the necessary conditions and at the same time allow the process to continue to evolve naturally, connecting an incredibly wide network of hcmf// and partners’," Radvilė Buivydienė, Head of Music Information Centre Lithuania, said about the cooperation project.

"Over the next three years, we will continue to deepen the partnership, which will bring more visibility for Lithuanian contemporary music creators and performers in the international art field, as well as co-productions. An important goal is to achieve greater involvement of music managers and cultural professionals, and participation in the festival's educational and talent development programmes. We believe that this cooperation will become a catalyst for the dissemination of Lithuanian music culture and enriching internationality beyond the boundaries of a single festival or region. We will strive to ensure that in the future, this ongoing and sustainable process will no longer need to be anchored in agreements with an 'expiry date'," said Julija Reklaitė, Director of the Lithuanian Culture Institute.

The announcement of the extension of the cooperation between Lithuania and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival will be made on 16 November, the second day of the festival, and will be attended by the Deputy Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania Daina Urbanavičienė, and the Minister Counsellor, Charge d'affaires of the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the United Kingdom Lina Zigmantaitė.

Focus on Lina Lapelytė's work, comebacks and premieres

"With references to pop culture, folk idioms and opera, but subtly extending this to the margins of her own work, Lina Lapelytė is the perfect artist for this year's eclectic hcmf// programme. I am delighted to present a comprehensive overview of Lapelytė's work, curated by the artist herself," said Graham McKenzie, artistic director of the festival and programme curator.

In the programme of works by Lapelytė, who became the composer-in-residence of the "hcmf//" festival, it will be possible to hear "Study of Slope", the performative part of which is songs performed by people who do not have musical hearing. There will also be a piece for four kanklės, Ladies, Pirouette for dancer and saxophone, and Candy Shop – the Circus for seven performers, including Lapelytė herself. She will also be on stage with Common Objects.

After a break, the works of Justė Janulytė, a much-loved composer of the festival audience, will return to hcmf//, with the British Ligeti Quartet performing an adaptation of Circle for a Square this year. The festival programme will present for the first time works by composer Justina Repečkaitė and composer Vykintas Baltakas, performed by the British duo Richard Uttley and Ben Goldscheider.

The Lithuanian program at the festival is unimaginable without the accents of improvisational music, and an increasingly large part of it is made up of the fruits of partnerships between Lithuanian and British artists formed on the cooperation platform. The quartet Ward – 4, recently formed by Liudas Mockūnas, Arnas Mikalkėnas, Simonas Kaupinis and Mikas Kurtinaitis, is preparing a programme of improvised music for the festival. This performance is the result of a joint exchange programme between hcmf// and Improdimensija. The first part of the performance was already presented in October during the Vilnius Jazz Festival.

The Twenty Fingers Duo ensemble of violinist Lora Kmieliauskaitė and cellist Arnas Kmieliauskas, returning to hcmf//, together with the British ensemble GSRB Duo, will perform the joint programme "Hyphen", which the performers prepared during the residency "In Between Silence" initiated by both ensembles. Featuring premieres of works by composers Julius Aglinskas and Lawrence Dunn, it has already been presented at the Muzikos ruduo festival in Vilnius and will soon be performed at the Iš arti festival in Kaunas.

A comprehensive panorama of Lithuanian contemporary music

During the first two years of the Lithuanian focus festival, 12 works by Lithuanian composers were played on the stages of Huddersfield (Justė Janulytė, Dominykos Digimos, Mykolos Natalevičiaus, Rūta Vitkauskaitė, Julius Aglinskas, Arturo Bumštein, Andriaus Maslekov, Simon Nekrošiaus, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Egidija Medekshaitė, Ramūnas Motiekaitis, Jurga Sharapova); the mastery and creativity of their performance was demonstrated by an improvised sound sculpture from Vilnius called "Sneeze Etiquette" (Arturas Bumšteinas, Kristupas Gikas, Adas Gecevičius and Dominykas Snarskis), the ensemble "Twenty Fingers Duo" (Lora Kmieliauskaitė and Arnas Kmieliauskas), the free jazz artist and improviser Liudas Mockūnas, the duet of Simonas Kaupinis and Arminas Bižys, and the contemporary music ensemble Synaesthesis.

The festival audience was also introduced to the interdisciplinarity of the Lithuanian contemporary music scene: the music and media project This Order Goes Wrong (project by composer D. Digimas, playwright Rimantas Ribačiauskas, video director Kristijonas Dirsė, costume designer Marta Nakaitė, violinist L. Kmieliauskaitė); and the Twenty Fingers Duo performed their debut album Performa in Huddersfield, which is a visually intonated sonic journey, and for which artist Lauryna Narkevičiūtė created six visualisations. The festival also featured a performative sound art event Bad Weather from the series Navigations by Operomania and A. Bumšteinas.

A deeper collaboration between hcmf// and its Lithuanian partners began to take shape in 2023. The festival programme featured Bumšteinas’ Stand-by for Minna, a specially commissioned work for organ and electronics, written during his residency in Huddersfield and performed by Gailė Griciūtė and Benas Jonušas.

The project is funded by the Lithuanian Culture Institute, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the United Kingdom.

For full information about the festival, which will take place this year 15-24 November, and tickets, please visit: https://hcmf.co.uk/