Participants:

We live in different times. At one moment everything rushes forward – news, work, deadlines, traffic, images on screens. And then, suddenly, there comes a moment when time seems to stop: in sound, in silence, in revelation. This concert unfolds between these two states – between time that carries us relentlessly forward and the suspended instant to which Faust pleads: “Stay a while – you are so beautiful!”

The ancient Greeks distinguished between two kinds of time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is the time of everyday flow – the ticking of the clock, the cycle of seasons, continuous movement. Kairos, by contrast, is a flash of presence: a moment of insight in which we suddenly see more clearly, hear more deeply, feel differently. We live most of our lives in Chronos, yet it is Kairos moments that enable transformation.

The programme Kairos / Chronos invites listeners on a journey between these states – somewhere between the light of dawn and trance, fragmentation and uninterrupted pulsation, inner disturbance and the guiding morning star.

The mythological work of Latvian composer Gundega Šmite, who lives in Greece, leads us into the liminal hour of dawn, where time has only just begun to breathe and a new light enters the world – a work for which the composer received Latvia’s highest music award. In the magical music of Estonian composer Helena Tulve, love becomes a guiding point through a changing world; inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, it stands as something constant to hold onto when everything around us shifts.

A particularly striking Kairos moment is created by a work from Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, in which the orchestra includes a performer who produces no sound at all. This act of silence subtly alters our perception, sharpening our listening and revealing the pervasive nature of sound itself.

Time can also fracture and reweave itself. In Dominykas Digimas’s music, it flickers in fragments like a haze of consciousness, while the saxophone concerto by Latvian composer Mārtiņš Viļums, who lives in Lithuania, is a surge of energy – at times wild, at times hypnotic – revealing the intensity of time in motion.
At the heart of the concert are three special events: three world premieres – Candela by Jānis Petraškevičs, Up-Time by Ilona Breģe, and Per Sense by Dominykas Digimas. These new works are born for this specific time and place, allowing contemporary music to be experienced as a living event whose moment of creation we can witness. One speaks of a lantern illuminating subterranean darkness, another reveals multiple temporal layers rushing simultaneously toward the future, while the third stands as a model example of Kairos.

Kairos / Chronos is not a concert in which time is measured in minutes. It is a concert in which time is experienced – as flow, as sudden illumination, as light and shadow. And perhaps it is precisely through such listening that we can come closer to understanding what it means to live in different times.

Location: Great Hall

Duration: two-part concert, approximately 2 hours

Organized by: Great Amber in cooperation with the Latvian Composers’ Union

Supported by: Liepāja City Council, State Culture Capital Foundation

Tickets: starting from € 15.00 (Ticket prices may change closer to the event)

Suggested age of attendees: 7+

Unnumbered tickets only for visitors in wheelchairs.

Discounts:
Students, teachers, seniors – 25%
Persons with group I and II disabilities and their companions – 50%
For holders of the Honorary Family Card (“3+ Ģimenes karte”) or LT (“Šeimos kortelė”) or EST (“Perekaart”) – 25%

NB. Upon attending a concert, the attendee must show personal identification.

Group tickets:
10–30 persons – 20%
30 and more persons – 25%