The cognitive capacity of modern humans is typically defined by measurable and verifiable facts and systems of various logics. We describe and encode the world with numbers, dates, taxonomies. From this arises the ancient Greek name of the present composition, which means “number 30.” The composition Triakonta was created on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Slovenia—the flute from Divje Babe. This mysterious flute, whose age and function have been scientifically proven many times, is an approximately 60,000-year-old musical instrument from the time of the Neanderthals who lived in this region.

As our cultural memory reaches into the past, we can describe many musical elements of the contemporary world—but only as far back as the beginnings of our civilization, to the fringes of prehistory, which we usually label—unjustly and superficially—as primitive. The encounter between our imagination and countless unknown expressions—in the case of the oldest flute in the world—fills us with awareness of the brevity of our lives, the limitations of our conceptual world, our reasoning and judgments. In relation to vast spans of time, we can feel our own fragility and smallness, but also a sense of reverence for the vanished knowledge that paved the way to the present.

Triakonta echoes through a long series of millennia, resonating in the sounds of the flute from Divje Babe, while also revealing to us the diversity of aesthetic possibilities hidden within these unimaginable dimensions of time. What is music today? What was it 1,000 years ago? What was it 10,000 years ago? Which sounds and emotions have managed to reach us through the cracks in time? These questions compel the composition into polystylism—both in content and in sound. We could say that the music of Triakonta is, in some of its fractures, contemporary—or perhaps at the same time, primeval.

With the help of an unusual musical language, Jazz Punt Big Band, together with multi-instrumentalist Boštjan Gombač, unites all distances into a single point and revives a long-forgotten mystical experience.