Twenty Fingers Duo

Tickets £14 // Concession £11 // Under 30 £5
Advance booking required

Lora Kmieliauskaitė violin
Arnas Kmieliauskas cello
Lauryna Narkevičiūtė digital art
Kristijonas Dirsė video projections

Twenty Fingers Duo
Performa 60’ UK Premiere

Performa: six contemporary pieces for violin and cello combined into one ‘visually intoned’ sonic journey. From near-silence to fortissimo, from clean, smooth lines to scratchy noise. Differences act as the binding material in this audiovisual project that freely oscillates between hypnotic sounds and frenzy, between lyricism and often-surfacing anti-ensemble tendencies.

The intertwined trajectories of sound and visual art in the project, premiered in Vilnius in 2019, sees live performance combined with visuals created by Lauryna Narkevičiūtė. Asking questions of just how much our imagination has to do with audible, tangible or visible reality, Performa was recorded and later released as the debut album of Twenty Fingers Duo, consisting of violinist Lora Kmieliauskaitė and cellist Arnas Kmieliauskas.

Contemporary music for a violin-and-cello string duo remains rather scarce not only in Lithuania but in the rest of the world too. Six composers who have contributed their works to Performa – Julius Aglinskas, Arturas Bumšteinas, Dominykas Digimas, Andrius Maslekovas, Mykolas Natalevičius, and Rūta Vitkauskaitė – are all active in performative art forms, predominantly dealing with various states and moods in their work. Their pieces allow for multiple ways to explore authentic interactions with sound and experience extreme situations. Put in the hands of two adventurous musicians and one musically sensitive visual artist, these collaborative artworks offer a very personal, multifaceted, sincere and, what’s more, gently ironic foray into the visual experience of sound.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Lithuanian Culture Institute and Music Information Centre Lithuania

Photo: Twenty Fingers Duo © Artūras Morozovas