FESTIVAL CONTRASTI 2025

FESTIVAL CONTRASTI 2025

 

from 16 tu 24 August 2025 – Sala Falconetto, via Belenzani, Trento

The MotoContrario Association of Trento – a collective of composers and performers committed to 20th century and contemporary musical literature – is proud to present the Contrasti 2025 Festival, now in its eleventh edition.

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2 Lectures:

 

 

 

Masterclass:

 

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After the preview-festival on Saturday 16 August, curated by Motocontrario, the Festival will focus on six days packed with activities and events, the fundamental part of which will consist of five concerts, three of which will feature ensembles and musicians of great fame, known on the national and international scene and specialized in the performance of contemporary music: the soprano and violin duo Juliet Fraser and Hannah Weirich and the ensembles Icarus vs Muzak from Reggio Emilia and Collettivo_21 from Piacenza.

Two concerts will instead be curated by the MotoContrario ensemble: the first will be dedicated to pieces by Mauricio Kagel, Carola Bauckholt, Malin Bång and Francesco Filidei, while the second will be held on the last day and will feature the performance of pieces by the students of the International Composition Masterclass organized within the Festival.

This year, the Festival will be dedicated to “sound theatre”, that is, that part of contemporary musical production that sees music as an experience complex performative, a sort of hybrid in which sound, gesture, scene, movement and word merge into a unitary language. The proposed scores do not only indicate notes, but also scenic actions and organization of space, proposing noises and executive gestures as musical material; composition, therefore, as a total art, which embraces gesture, space, sound, critical sense.

Paths will intertwine that unfold through different compositional experiences: from the ironic and paradoxical language of Mauricio Kagel, who deconstructs the rituals of the concert, to the vocal théâtre musical, between spoken language and sound, of Georges Aperghis, to arrive at the more recent music of Malin Bång, who combines the use of concrete sound material (objets trouvés, surfaces, unconventional instruments) with an “abstract narration”, and that of Francesco Filidei, a “gestural theatre” inhabited by movements that are often exaggerated and full of dramaturgical meaning.

The central figure of the entire Festival will be the German composer Carola Bauckholt, whose poetics focuses both on the amplified listening of reality, exploring everyday sounds, noises, natural phenomena, and on mimesis and sonic ambiguity, with situations in which the instruments imitate sounds of the surrounding environment. His production bears witness to a theatricality that is not irreverent, discreet, but structural: gestures, postures, the scenic relationship are part of the composition and the musicians (or rather, the performers) not only play but listen, imitate, interact with the sound environments that they themselves create.

Carola Bauckholt herself, whose music will resonate in each of the proposed concerts, will be the teacher who this year will hold the International Composition Masterclass organized within the Festival; the masterclass, structured over six days of intensive lessons and seminars, will be the backdrop and backdrop to the entire event, bringing young composers from all over the world to Trento, in addition, of course, to the illustrious composer.

The Festival also offers two lectures open to the public: the first of the two meetings will be held by Carola Bauckholt herself, while the second will see the young and established Norwegian composer Kristine Tjøgersen as a very welcome guest.

Finally, the collaboration established with the Municipality of Trento is of absolute value, which will host all the Festival events in some of its spaces; the concerts in the Sala Falconetto of Palazzo Geremia and the masterclass lessons in the SpazioLab of Torre Mirana, in the heart of the city.

MotoContrario also this year wants to offer the public a music festival that aims to deepen the knowledge of authors and trends within the jagged world of today’s music research; the Contrasti Festival, in this sense, is internationally recognized as a reliable space for the representation of the most up-to-date musical creativity, since it promotes and realizes high-quality professional performances, ensured by the MotoContrario ensemble and the numerous and prestigious guests who have been invited during the various editions.

Enjoy!

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