Sacred, Profane, and Unsettlingly Alive
Sacrum Profanum in Kraków offered intense sonic experiences and musical battles – but also performances where the idea outweighed the music.
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Sacrum Profanum in Kraków offered intense sonic experiences and musical battles – but also performances where the idea outweighed the music.
Revivals have moved onto the agenda among Danish composers, and this month two violent operas by Matias Vestergård benefited from the trend. What is it that makes him so good at writing precisely that kind of work?
Local traditions play a central role in the second-ever Faroese opera, in which Sunleif Rasmussen reclaims a local story made famous by Wagner.
From cyborg kinships and alchemical wonder to masculine fragility and Anthropocene ecstasy – MINU showed that art still holds space for vulnerability, ferocity and strange beauty.
Charlottenborgs hyldest til Mika Vainio vil være en lydbiograf, men uden ordentlig volumen, mørke eller kontekst ender installationen som en oplevelse, man hurtigt glider ud af.
Current Resonance turned the idea of work inside out in an absurd, sweat-drenched performance that pulled the audience into a hard-pumped ritual of labour.
Unsound in Kraków is still more than a festival – it’s an echo of our own search for connection in the age of noise.
At the Musica festival in Strasbourg, everything from children’s concerts to organ storms and performative string quartets turned into a playful exploration of sound, body, and community.
Ostrava Days transformed the old mining town into a laboratory of sound, where contemporary music pressed its way out between dust, drones, and Dadaist madness.<br />
This year’s Rued Langgaard Festival set out to open the gate to Danish mysticism, but at times disappeared itself into a haze of filler and gimmickry – though a few concerts stood strong.
Copenhagen Opera Festival 2025 turned away from opera’s classical themes of fate and instead gave space to intimate music-dramatic experiments on queer identity, domestic violence, climate crisis, and mental illness.
Struer Tracks showed that even municipal branding can open new worlds when sound art gets involved – from glitching rat voices in the basement of the music school to subwoofers that shook the harbor.
Savonlinna’s castle festival lets Finnish national opera resonate between stone, lake, and summer night – and shows how dark dramas can mirror the soul of a people.
At its best, the ambitious sound art walk »Witness Stand« at Refshaleøen pierces right into Copenhagen’s gentrification of the old industrial area. But does it realise that it is itself part of the problem?
Borealis in Bergen promises experimental music but falls short when it comes to traditional concert formats. Instead, magic emerges when the audience is invited out into the forest or into floating sound saunas.
From digital melancholy and ritual noise assaults to pure silence – MaerzMusik explored the tactile forces of sound and the boundaries of the body.
The Only Connect festival in Stavanger transformed the city into a landscape of noise, poetry and bodily vibrations.
Katsuko Tsujimura sought to dissolve the body in postwar Japan. Now, new voices are gently piecing it back together.
The MOMENTUM biennial in Moss, Norway lets sound art speak, guiding the audience into the borderlands of the senses – where even a toilet resonates like an echo chamber.
This year’s edition of Copenhagen’s festival for new music embraced sonic rituals, cultural encounters, and performances with loops, bodies, and cassette tapes – and featured French musicians playing as if sound itself could change the world.
At the Bergen International Festival, William Kentridge and Ryoji Ikeda let art capture what can no longer be said – only felt.
At Geneva’s Archipel Festival, lost instruments and occult soundscapes are brought to life in a journey through speculative rituals and experimental music.
From seductive echoes in an abandoned yeast factory to allergy-inducing angel wings in a baroque church – Musik Installationen Nürnberg put the body in motion, but left the question of what a music installation truly is unanswered.
From giant flutes to performative rituals – the anniversary edition of the Aarhus-based festival unfolded the materiality of sound and musical collaboration in new forms.
Estonian Music Days revealed how a young, vocally attuned community of composers in the small country between Finland and Russia combines historical depth with freedom, resonance, and intimacy.