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Sonica Glasgow turned sound into massage, sweets into instruments and Serbian folk song into a psychedelic journey. The festival was most convincing when it dared to go all the way to the edge.
The Oslo-based contemporary music festival Ultima taught me that in a world where everything makes noise, silence can be the most radical expression of all. Perhaps we should send Ed Sheeran to Norway for a study trip?
In Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s first opera, the Arctic becomes a landscape for music that moves slowly but contains immense power.
On Samsø, Salad Days makes room for sound art, improvisation, noise and experimental music. The festival’s small scale creates a particular openness – but also leaves the project vulnerable, as it depends on the efforts of a few people.
The Rued Langgaard Festival opened up the composer’s universe to Sweden, visual art and new interpretations of his music. The strongest moments came when Langgaard escaped the familiar confines. The next step must be to bring him further out into Ribe.
Copenhagen Opera Festival has broadened the reach of opera while making it more experimental under Amy Lane. But when bold projects fail to find their form, the courage to experiment can tip into gimmickry.
On three new albums by Sofie Birch, Tyondai Braxton, and Gustaf Dicksson & co., electronics come alive, melodies are allowed to lose their way, and experimental music discovers a rare lightness.
The Bergen International Festival promised »endless love«. I listened closely – and found it everywhere from medieval madrigals to pop ballads spanning the centuries.
The German Moers Festival is no longer primarily a jazz festival, but a curated laboratory for free improvisation, sound art, compositional music, and political absurdism. At times it feels forced. Most of the time, it is liberating.
Klang Festival was at its strongest when the works spoke directly to the body rather than to the programme notes. Not everything succeeded, but this year's festival was willing to take risks.
At Jazzkaar, international stars are no longer the main attraction. Instead, the festival offers a glimpse of an Estonian scene in the process of shaping its own musical identity.
Niels Rønsholdt’s new music-theatre work »Osmosis« creates a compelling universe of inverted trees, yearning voices, and rock-inflected asceticism. Yet the work’s central idea remains elusive.
Contemporary music is still alive – but often despite its own obsession with complexity and endless duration. That became clear at the festivals in Witten and Cologne.
While the industry talked about AI and formats, it was the bodily, fragile, and defiant musical experiences that lingered at Spot 2026.
Marina Abramović, Miranda July and Laurie Anderson explore sound, body and absence at Nørrebro Teater – but only one work truly transforms emptiness into experience.
At the Archipel Festival, listening became both a sensory experience and a political question.
Spor 2026 took its audience from embarrassed laughter to resonant sonic landscapes in a festival that both transgressed boundaries and overwhelmed the senses.
Chopin was shattered, instruments reinvented, and time dissolved at Only Connect in Oslo.
SØS Gunver Ryberg blows Verdi apart from within in a fierce and sensuous Jeanne d’Arc, where the beauty of opera collides with the noise of war and the fractures of the present.
Estonian Music Days revealed a musical culture caught between tradition, renewal, and a restless world.
MaerzMusik in Berlin opened with 50 pianos – and bold experiments that didn't always land.
For a long time, CTM has served as a beacon for contemporary electronic music. But in an increasingly fragmented scene, the question arises: does the festival still show the way?
At Borealis in Bergen, community is everywhere. But when everything is filtered through safety and intimacy, the music risks losing its necessity – and its bite.
The major Danish composer festivals are starting to resemble each other more and more, but Pulsar Festival stands apart. Here, there is still more string quartet than performance art, making Pulsar an important alternative platform for new music – if only the festival itself would fully realize it.
Marina Abramović lets herself be murdered, burned, and thrown to her death in »Seven Deaths« at the Cisterns – but the operatic canon voiced by Maria Callas tempers the radicality that has otherwise carried her art through an entire lifetime.