On 17 October, a unique encounter will take place: two folk music bands, both based in Canada, will perform together at the City Laboratory in Vilnius, both of which are connected to and inspired by Baltic traditions.

Honeypaw is a duo formed by Jurgita Žvinklytė and Matti Palonen, who have been working in the Baltic music scene since she relocated to Toronto (Canada) in 2019. Since then, they have been performing traditional songs in Lithuanian, Finnish and Karelian on recordings of the kanklé, kantele and jouhikko instruments in Canada and Europe. On this tour of Lithuania, they will present songs from unpublished wax cylinder recordings made by Finnish folklorist A.R. Niemi in 1912, with stops in the Lithuanian locations where they were recorded.

Crooked Mouth is a neo-folk band founded by Ian Campbell, a native of British Columbia, Canada, and a resident of Vilnius, Lithuania since 2022. Crooked Mouth explores liminal sonic spaces where British guitar-ballad folk collides with Baltic instruments, mythology and atmospherics, mixing with experiments from the contemporary underground music world. Crooked Mouth takes it all in through the alchemical prism of self-knowledge transformation. Tonight will be the first concert of their European tour, starting in Vilnius and stretching all the way to France and back.