Seismograf: The new music breathes in the old coal mining town
Publikováno: 1.11.2023
The cover article of Seismograf magazine is currently a report from Ostrava Days. You can read it (in the original) at the link below, we present here only a short excerpt:
"One of Europe's largest new music biennials has long since said goodbye to the old world. Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic was almost like New York – at least for ten days.
Who would play Xenakis on solo trombone long after midnight? And in a former 19th century city slaughterhouse? There was also a piece by Luigi Nono. Indeed, one of the last nights of the Ostrava Days festival - the Festival of Music of Today - was called The Long Night, and among the many concerts, an opera about Donald Trump managed to squeeze in. But this Friday was the representative day of the ten-day festival in the former mining town of Ostrava near the Polish border. It is, after all, an intense festival packed with the latest music and sound art. After all, it featured Iannis Xenakis' Keren (1986) and Nono's A Pierre. Dell'azzuro silenzio, inquietum (1985), which were among the earliest works of the entire festival.
(...)
The artistic director of Ostrava Days Petr Kotík lives in New York. And I dare say that you would not find more contemporary music in New York in a whole month than in ten days at Ostrava Days. It's an uncompromising festival, packed with songs that don't pander to the audience. As in Brooklyn's Knitting Factory, a small factory that became the home of experimental music, something has happened in the once noisy Czech industrial capital since the last miner emerged in 1994. This is where the sounds of the old and new worlds meet. It's a place where new music breathes the morning air."
Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek, Seismograf | you can read the full report in the Danish original here >>>
