Source: http://musicaelectronicanova.pl
A festival dedicated to assessing the present state of electronic music, Musica Electronica Nova (MEN) guarantees its audience an ear- and eye-opening experience. Presenting groundbreaking innovations in the scene, the event's 2013 edition features an orchestra made up entirely of human voices, a vocalist performing a duet with her own video reflection, and spatial sounds produced by an Acousmonium.
Taking on the theme “scene and motion,” the MEN Festival 2013 adds movement to electronics’ typical adornment in light and shapes. It will transform the city of Wrocław into the capital of electronic music for the month of October while simultaneously broadening the horizons of the genre.
Says Elżbieta Sikora, the festival's artistic director and renowned composer: “We want to introduce electronics into spheres that it only rarely takes an interest in: opera, ballet, installation and visual arts.” She also emphasized the already present multiplicity of forms in electroacoustic music:
Not forgetting its past successes, we are blazing new trails. Apart from presenting electronic music that has particularly stood out over the past few years, we also run out to the future, commissioning pieces and provoking meetings of artists from various fields.
The festivities will begin on Wednesday the 16th of October with Sounds Out of the Machine; a special event designed for young people that combines a lecture and concert. The following weekend will feature back-to-back performances of modern dance and the opening concert of music from Michel van der Aa, Krzysztof Knittel and Sławomir Kupczak.
Coming from the Netherlands, this year’s composer-in-residence is a key multidisciplinary figure in contemporary music, Michel van der Aa. Marked by his combinations of film and stage direction involving script writing, he is an ideal candidate to manifest the goals for this year’s event. His Up-close for cello, string orchestra and film (2010) will be broadcast as a video presentation by request of the composer, who was presented the prestigious Grawemeyer Award by the University of Louisville in 2013.
In addition to these performances, MEN 2013 will also feature its Sound Cinema project - created in 2011 in cooperation with the National Audiovisual Institute in Poland - panel discussions and a premier of the extraordinary project Eklektic Barbarians by trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer and Moritz von Oswald, combining jazz and techno.
The full line-up can be found on the festival’s webpage.
Sources: musicaelectronicanova.pl, PAP; author: Lucyna Szura 15/10/2013, translation: SMG 16/10/2013