Ostrava Days Festival

New and Experimental Music Institute and Festival
Festival >> August 22 - 31, 2019
Ostrava, Czech Republic

The Ostrava Days Festival is somewhat of a revelation, a miracle 
in the field of contemporary music in our country…
Opus Musicum (Brno) 

Ostrava Days is the finest festival of modernism in classical music there is, 
it has no peers or rivals.
Brooklyn Rail (New York)

The biennial Ostrava Days is more than a festival. It is a three-week music event of international scope. This year, 36 young composers from 14 countries including Peru, Great Britain, China, Germany, Canada and the USA will take part in Ostrava Days, along with 16 resident composers, some of them associated with universities such as Harvard, Graz, Prague and Berlin. There will be orchestras, ensembles, conductors and soloists from Europe and overseas. Over the course of its final 10 days, there will be 14 concerts with symphony chamber orchestra, as well as an opera performance. This year’s program will also feature the Long Night– an 18-hour marathon event of compositions mainly from the second half of the 20th century. The festival will continue with events such as the Minimarathon of Electronic Music, and a symposium on the current state of new composition within the Czech music scene. Throughout these 10 days, there will be informal meetings among participants and audience members, which creates an atmosphere of discovery in summer Ostrava.

The concerts will take place in many postindustrial sites around the city, as well as in the Theatre, Conservatory and Cathedral. All venues are within a 15-minute walk from each other. Young players from all over Europe will form the unique ONO/Ostrava New Orchestra, an international group of extraordinary musicians. Ostravská banda will return as the resident chamber ensemble of the festival, and for the first time in the history of Ostrava Days, we will welcome the Prague Radio Symphonic Orchestra to the festival. After many years, Bozzini Quartet from Canada will return to Ostrava, and Studio Dan from Vienna will premiere a performance at the festival. Ostrava sits at the foot of the Beskydy mountains, and the trip to the mountains and back takes only a few hours.