In the Music of the Place Studio, we begin to listen to our river. Following its current, we arrive at the Lithuanian town of Merkinė, at a bend of the Nemunas, whose river basin also includes the Marycha River near Sejny. At that time, winter is slowly breaking apart; streams burst from beneath the ice, water flows through the streets of the town, dripping from tin roofs. All of this has its own sound and resonance. The thaw flows before us. There is a Jeiwsh cemetery above the terraces of the Nemunas’ small tributaries. The wind sweeps away the silence there, creaking through the branches of the trees. Merkinė is a place with a dense map, with open layers of different memories. Our guides through the town are Žygimantas Buržinskas and Algimantas Rokas Černiauskas. In the afternoon, we are hosted by the Aritmija Festival — at a concert on their home stage, we capture the sound of a flute wandering among the thaw.
Today we share a small composition from that day — fragments of field recordings and instrumental sounds. We also announce the beginning of our activities focused on listening to the river, which gathers the stories of Merkinė and Sejny within the shared basin of the Nemunas.
Field recordings: Piotr Szroeder, Mikołaj Pohl
Instruments and photographs: Mikołaj Pol
Flute: Algimantas Rokas Černiauskas
The link to the recording is found here