Composer Matas Drukteinis: “The success of the festival is determined by many reasons” | Culture

This September will mark the tenth anniversary of the festival, so M. Drukteinis revealed the behind-the-scenes of its organization and fun surprises. Orinta Pileckaitė, an intern of the Lithuanian Council of Culture, talks to the composer.

– The “Music in space” festival is approaching. What stage of preparation are you currently in?

– This year we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the festival. Already at the end of April, we presented a special festival event at the Government House to commemorate this anniversary together with the 20th anniversary of NATO and the EU. It was like an introduction to our annual fall program, which we are actively preparing for.

Photo by Tomas Tereks/Matas Drukteinis “Music for Vilnius”

– What does festival planning and logistics look like – from idea to implementation?

– Recently, we started planning the festival a year ago, preparing an application to the Lithuanian Council of Culture. “Music in space” takes place at the beginning of September, so we are in a somewhat ungrateful situation – at the same time as the current year’s festival is taking place, we already have to plan for the next one. Therefore, starting from this year, we are starting to project the main aspects – the concept, the topic, the possible participants – for several years ahead.

Moving from an idea to its implementation presents many challenges. First of all, the challenges are related to the fact that most of the works are new, specially created for the festival. Ideas are implemented for concerts in unusual spaces – sometimes completely unsuitable for larger events, but very interesting, in which we would not normally hear music or which we did not know or noticed before. All this creates a lot of unpredictable situations that often complicate the implementation of works. However, the ideas are always worth the hard work and the best possible implementation – this is also appreciated by the listeners.

– What strategies do you employ to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for festival goers?

– As I mentioned, our festival takes place in unusual spaces, as a result of which the composers’ works are particularly different in the nature of their performance. During the festival, we aim to ensure the smooth operation of the equipment, as well as to coordinate flows so that visitors can easily find the venue.

However, often complicated access, not very comfortable listening to a piece or other natural environmental disturbances become part of the experience at our festival. In this case, not only do we not try to mask them, but we create even more suitable conditions for visitors to become active participants of the space or work.

Photo by Tomas Tereks/Matas Drukteinis “Music for Vilnius”

One of the most obvious examples is the noise of the city, which merges with the music, sometimes even drowns it out. Or strange, uncomfortable passers-by (laughing). Of course, we always try to ensure safety at the festival, but it does not take place in the concert hall. We are in a city that is what it is – we can only react to it, but we cannot change it. If we manage to make it through the festival under such conditions, we consider it to be the most evocative experience.

– How do you manage the festival budget and ensure financial success?

– The budget issue, especially recently, is one of the main sources of stress (laughing). Speaking more seriously, organizing a somewhat larger or consistently growing festival and managing its budget, we, like other cultural operators, festival organizers, face all the challenges of long-term Lithuanian culture policy formation and its implementation strengths and weaknesses.

The biggest challenge is the sustainability of the budget, its planning for several years ahead. This is the only way to thoughtfully plan a festival growth, development. When we can basically plan the budget only for a year ahead (sometimes even for a shorter time), it is difficult to create long-term visions and action plans. Sources of funding become one of the main tasks as the festival grows diversification – an effort to have as many and as diverse funding sources as possible.

However, even realizing the benefits of this, it is extremely difficult to implement this task in practice. Therefore the festival budget directly affects the ambitions of the program, the complexity of the presented works, effectiveness, quality of implementation. Not in all cases, but most of the time.

– How important is the financing of the Lithuanian Council of Culture in implementing the event? Could it happen without state investment?

– Funds allocated by the Lithuanian Council of Culture make up the largest part of the festival’s budget revenues. In fact, it cannot be otherwise. Virtually any professional arts festival or event that is not specifically focused on commercial success cannot currently cover all implementation costs without a significant injection of public or private sponsors. Even the simplest contemporary music concert would be difficult to organize only, for example, from the income from the tickets sold. This is the result of our market, economy, purchasing power, price trends and general perception of culture.

Photo by Tomas Tereks/Matas Drukteinis “Music for Vilnius”

It is true that this problem is not only Lithuanian, it is a global challenge. On the one hand, they are solved by the state financing the field of culture much better, on the other hand, by creating particularly favorable conditions for the private sector to support culture by encouraging patronage. The most common practice is to balance between these two tasks of cultural policy.

In Lithuania, due to the weak traditions of patronage in the field of culture, as well as the consumption habits of professional, especially contemporary, culture or even overvalued musical education institutions and for many other reasons, it is practically impossible to collect a significant part of the budget for the festival from sources other than state funding. Even if the state funding is only slightly reduced, it immediately affects the content of the festival.

– When organizing a festival, you probably have to face various challenges. Tell us how you are dealing with them.

– Every year there are bigger or smaller challenges that we have to solve creatively, and sometimes they unexpectedly make the experiences caused by musical works more interesting. We once implemented the work of Rita Mačiliūnaitė and Aivars Dočkaus in Vilnius public transport. We planned that the track will be listened to by scanning the QR code sticker on the buses.

It turned out that this could not be done, so we came up with the idea of ​​installing “festival seats” with headphones. Although the idea was great, we unexpectedly encountered another problem: during the few days of the festival, even with the volunteers carefully guarding the equipment, almost everything was stolen. Despite (relatively small) losses, stress for volunteers and bitter, then I thought that it was a great social experiment, showing how much however, our society has moved towards western values.

We select a part of the composers and works of the festival “Muzika in space” together with the artistic director Agne Matulevičiūta, and we supplement the other part of the program with ideas selected in an open competition. After discussing with us, the performers are chosen by the composers themselves, taking into account the composition of the piece, the specific abilities of the performers, for example, improvisation, openness in embodying unexpected ideas of the composers, for example, playing in the forest.

You can probably imagine that coordinating the implementation of these works is not the easiest. We are often unable to provide the creators with a change of clothes or rest between performance venues, and have to play in thankless conditions – cold, hot, deserted and dusty spaces. It becomes a challenge for everyone. On the other hand, it develops the ability to adapt to circumstances, allows you to test your capabilities. As organizers, we always understand this, appreciate it and try to improve the conditions as much as possible.

– What marketing and advertising tools do you use to attract a diverse audience to the festival?

– The very concept of the “Music in space” festival, according to which works are performed in different spaces, attracts an extremely diverse audience every year. It is natural to meet families, seniors, and young listeners at the events. The informality and openness of the festival makes it safer to feel and participate in professional culture for listeners from various social backgrounds. Part of this target audience is related to the spaces where the works are presented.

Therefore we try to connect marketing and advertising tools primarily with this aspect. Of course, when promoting the festival, one of the main communication tasks remains its general awareness raising, so every year various means of mass information are used – outdoor advertising, advertising on public transport, mentions on the radio, etc.

– How do you choose the festival spaces? What do you consider?

– “Music in space” – a festival of embedded music. Composers create works or adapt (incorporate) previously created works, taking into account the theme of the festival year. Based on this, they formulate creative ideas and, with our help, choose the spaces where the concept of their work will best unfold. The works do not only analyze a specific topic. They reflect the chosen space, combining music with local architectural, urban, historical, socio-cultural or other contexts.

We encourage composers to conduct careful artistic research when creating – to familiarize themselves with the space’s architecture, history, present, the community operating there, and collect relevant contextual information. If necessary, we always help and organize meetings with representatives of the space and the community.

Choosing and coordinating the place for the implementation of the work is not an easy process. There are times when a work cannot be performed at the composer’s original location, the community curating that location does not want additional publicity, or the work simply cannot be performed due to practical circumstances. Composers are then either looking for an alternative venue where the idea of ​​the piece can be fulfilled, or are forced to rethink the concept. Of course, the ten-year experience of the festival allows us, as organizers, to make fairly accurate assumptions in advance about the prospects for the implementation of formulated ideas and sometimes prevent the planned work from failing.

– How do you imagine the future of the “Music in Space” festival? What determines its success?

– I hope that it will be possible to maintain the consistent growth of the festival. The festival of this format – embedded music – is the only one in Lithuania, by the way, there are few such examples in the world. For the past ten years, our work has been shared in the city of Vilnius and its surroundings. However, there are an infinite number of unique places in Lithuania, so we plan to move some of the events to others cities or areas.

When talking about the festival, we also get a lot of attention from foreign – from organizers of music or cultural events to social or ecological activities developing organizations. The connection of contemporary music with a specific place, communities, on current topics everyone finds intriguing and attractive. So we have the potential to grow internationally. However, when planning, we must also have a clear understanding of our culture and hers unpredictability of the financing system.

I have talked about this before. Festival growth is difficult to plan in a coordinated manner. It is possible, but it costs a lot of work, which will not necessarily be appreciated or bring the desired result. Not because it’s poorly done, it just is due to the fact that it “not enough money” or “a few points short”.

You ask what makes a festival successful. I ask: Can we consider success permanent? poverty due to low funding for a decade of working with inadequately small organizational team, although growing, but still too low royalties for creators, when barely finances are sufficient for the technical implementation of really valuable ideas of composers, and they are necessary limited? Can we feel that we are working successfully when the funding for the Jubilee Festival is reduced without argument by almost a third?

Nevertheless, we feel and see the success of the festival from the growing number of listeners, from them positive feedback, from valuable cooperation with solid partners. We feel success seeing that during all these years we managed to gather a strong creative community of the festival, which after a drastic reduction in funding, they started sending messages that they could create or perform this year without reward to keep the festival alive.

It is extremely exciting. I think that the success is determined by many reasons that make the embedded music festival “Muzika in space” unique – they, I hope I managed to reveal. I can sum it up like this: we offer a completely different format to create and experience music and environment. And it works!