JURIS ĀBOLS (1950–2020) : Opera Xeniae. Juris Ābols, saxophone, flute; Sigvards Kļava, Dace Kļava, synthesisers, Latvian Radio Choir 
Sigvards Kļava - conductor.

Description: This may be one of the strangest and most bewildering items we’ve ever offered - and that’s saying a lot. Ābols apparently trained as a flautist, and also in composition (though the details of both remain - deliberately? - obscure); he performed in an opera orchestra, and in his own chamber ensemble in the 1980s. The first concert of his music seems to have taken place in 2020, at which event he said: "I've completed a full 360-degree circle, beginning with an exercise in harmony to Dadaism and back again, slowly approaching an eight-part chorus and classical harmonies. It's a natural path. And I'm perfectly happy with it. Because I've achieved everything”. He died very shortly after, within weeks, but the details of exactly when and how are unknown, because he lived alone. Sigvards Klava, in his booklet notes, does nothing to dispel the aura of mystery surrounding the composer with statements like: " Juris Abols was an event, a happening, an experience. […] To call him a composer seems like a gross understatement. In his music, Abols was a describer of the Gobi Desert, a researcher of elephants and mice, an expert on normal physiology, a connoisseur of political-erotic games, a contemplative composer of crystal-clear motets, a scribe of Livonian chronicles and the Crusades, a clairvoyant of zodiac signs and an ancient priest of all kinds of knowledge who loved to write letters. He also refused to take a step without his famous colourful cap on his head." OPERA XENIAE's libretto, by the composer, is based on motifs in the book of epigrams Xenia (‘gift’) by Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial) (fl. 1st century AD), and the works of Aristophanes. Martial himself appears as a "character" in the work, alongside his own addressees, Thaïs – ‘the erotic aspect’; Muse – ‘the creative aspect’; Demostratos; Coryphaeus – and Ābols’ invented characters, Dankeschön, Gigabyte and Megapixel. In the first number, which lasts 2’51, we are already bombarded by Spanish guitar, a pastiche of a Baroque aria (with the accompaniment on synthesisers), field recordings, lounge music with vibraphone solo, and surreal little fragments of dialogue in several languages. The rest of the piece continues in similarly outlandish, polyglot vein, both in music and text, in a collage of styles and allusions; numbers include The Song About Looking at One's Bottom, Phallic Ritual, and The Pig's Aria - just to give an idea of how normal it all is. Paradoxically, though, the piece is oddly appealing, because as surreal as the purposes to which it is put, the actual music, whether channelling Monteverdi, psychedelic jazz, lounge jazz, klezmer, or folk music, is almost entirely tonal (or modal), and harmonically satisfying, rich and consonant. And because, like a Dadaist exhibition, there is no predicting what will occur next, one is strangely compelled to follow the work wherever it goes, for the thrill of finding out what the next cleverly crafted episode of zany bizarrerie will be.