The Unsound Festival strives to showcase the many faces of creative music, from modern club sounds to post-classical and experimental. This month they bring Norwegian duo Deaf Center to New York for an artist talk on Sunday April 3rd, silent film concert for a screening of Nosferatu Monday April 4th, and a warm up set for the Sinfonietta Cracovia on Thursday April 7th.
In 2010, Krakow’s Unsound Festival crossed the Atlantic for the first time, working with New York organizations, promoters and venues to create the first Unsound Festival in the city. The festival triggered a wave of interest from the public and press, excited not only by legendary names in electronic music making their first appearances in New York, but also an array of underexposed East European artists who took the stage beside lauded contemporaries. In April of 2011 the Unsound Festival returns to New York!
Unique cross-border collaborations will be on show, many taking place for the first time during a lead-up to the main festival called Unsound Festival New York LABS, where artists will be encouraged to try new things. Smaller experimental shows will be contrasted with a huge festival opening night curated with Sacrum Profanum, Unsound’s sister festival from Krakow, including the New York debut of one of Europe’s great chamber orchestras,
Sinfonietta Cracovia, performing work by Steve Reich, Krzysztof Penderecki and the Unsoundcommissioned “Music for Solaris.”
Unsound Festival New York will highlight music pioneers, some established and others overlooked, revealing their influence on a younger generation of artists. A broad range of panels, workshops and Q&A’s will build a context of dialogue to help take it all in. This is a festival that reaches out and creates surprising connections, between artists, in programming and in venues, stretching from Lincoln Center to underground spaces in Brooklyn. Presented by Fundacja Tone, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institut New York along with a range of prestigious partners, Unsound Festival New York’s aim is to delight, challenge and subvert expectations.
Deaf Center at the Unsound Festival:
Sunday April 3 at 4 pm // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
CONVERSATION: DEAF CENTER
The Norwegian ambient duo Deaf Center discuss their haunting work, including two forthcoming performances at Unsound: a side-project-related live soundtrack for F.W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu (by Svarte Greiner, with Paul Wirkus) and a Deaf Center set preceding music by composer Henryck Gorecki. In conversation with journalist Christopher R. Weingarten (Village Voice, Spin, Revolver).
Tickets: Free
Monday April 4 at 7:30 pm // BAMcinématek
UNSOUND LABS: NOSFERATU, SYMPHONY OF FEAR
A screening of the silent horror film Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau, a classic of German expressionist cinema. A live score will be provided by Norwegian Svarte Greiner, creator of "acoustic doom", as well as the founder of the celebrated Miasmah label. He will perform with Polish/German percussionist Paul Wirkus.
07:30 PM Svarte Greiner
07:30 PM Paul Wirkus
Tickets: $15, $10 for BAMcinématek members
Thursday April 7 at 10:00 pm // Judson Church
BEYOND THE DARK
Presented with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute
The celebrated Polish composer Henryk Mikołaj Górecki died in 2010. Known for the hugely popular 3rd Symphony, his work ranges from radical modernism to the deeply romantic. This is a unique chance to hear Gorecki performed by Sinfonietta Cracovia, which had a close relationship to the composer. Norwegian duo Deaf Center opens, fusing electronics and acoustic instruments.
10:20 PM Deaf Center
11:15 PM Henryk Gorecki
11:15 PM Sinfonietta Cracovia
Tickets: $12 advance, $15 at the door
To see the full program please visit the Unsound Festival web pages