SONIC MATTER Festival

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2025

30 January –
2 February 2025

Throwaway mentality is not a concept for eternity. This realisation has now taken hold. The issue of better dealing with yesterday's legacy is fuelling the imagination. How to save forgotten beauty over time? Where to put unwanted remnants? What to do with traditions and thought patterns? Retro chic, recycling economy, preservation, and unlearning are just some of the answers. There is a wealth of various ideas. The SONIC MATTER Festival Zurich 2025 explored them under the motto of «REMAKE». We welceomed the ensembles Eklekto, We Spoke, and Hyper Duo from Western Switzerland, the company [in]operabilities with music theatre for all the senses, our artist-in-residence Hardi Kurda, guest curator Niga Salam, and many more. As a nomadic festival, we moved from the Kasernenareal to the Gessnerallee and on to the ZHdK for our fourth edition. In teaming up with borderline club culture, we were also guesting at Kauz for the first time. We look forward to seeing you again around the weekend at the end of February / beginning of March, 2026!

–––––––––––– Gessnerallee –––––––––––– Kunstraum Walcheturm –––––––––––– Kauz Club –––––––––––– Restaurant Zeughaushof –––––––––––– Toni-Areal ––––––––––––

Artists

Alexandre Babel, Boshoco, Brvna, Noémi Büchi, Martina Buzzi, Mio Chareteau, Jessie Cox, Eklekto, El Kontessa, Morton Feldman, Gilles Grimaître, Salômé Guillemin-Poeuf, Juliana Hodkinson, Eloain Lovis Hübner, Hyper Duo, [in]operabilities, Raz Kamaran, Simone Keller, Axel Kolb, Hardi Kurda, Fernando Manassero, Isandro Ojeda-García, Celeste Oram, Sarina Panahideh, Niga Salam, Monika Stalder, Uhuruku, Vokalensemble Zürich, Anna-Louise Walton & We Spoke.

Artist in Residence Hardi Kurda

Guest Curator Niga Salam

Tickets and info available here.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

Every year during the winter months, the SONIC MATTER Festival invites you to explore experimental music at various locations in Zurich. From 2021 to 2023 in collaboration with an annually changing guest festival, we brought artists from Switzerland and the international community together for concerts, sound parcours, performances, exhibitions, lounges, club nights, and discussions.

The next SONIC MATTER Festival run from 30 January to 2 February 2025 under the motto «remake». The detailed programme and tickets purches adresses can be found here.

Don't want to miss any updates on our future festivals or our around the year activities like SONIC MATTER_radio or the soundguide? Then we look forward to adding you to our newsletter mailing list. Please fill out the registration form here.

Find visual impressions of past festival editions on this site.

Discover artists and programme details on our archive.

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2023

People fleeing poverty and war, a pandemic, climate change: the crises of our time are omnipresent. Their effects are felt around the globe and even impact on the most personal aspects of our lives. We often feel at a loss when faced with the challenges they put to us; however, this same feeling also fuels our urge to meet them. In 2023 th SONIC MATTER Festival for Experimental Music took a closer look at coping strategies: how can the interrelatedness of our world provide an opportunity for encountering what and who we consider Other? Can rituals help us change our way of thinking? Which new perspectives are revealed to us when we change our way of seeing? For the third edition of the festival, we considered these questions with the help of that year’s guest festival, Irtijal Beirut, and artists from West Asia, Africa, and Europe. Under the auspices of the edition’s motto LEAP, we invited audiences to propel themselves into the unknown – with strength, courage, and curiosity for the future.

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2022

To begin, to climb, to grow, to resist – RISE, the overarching theme of the 2022 edition of SONIC MATTER Festival for Experimental Music, lend itself to diverse interpretations. From 1–4 December 2022 twenty events took audiences on journeys into personal and shared experiences of belonging, identity, transgressions, and resistance. Listening always marked the point of departure. Traditions in the form of music, sound, and noises have a different character than the documents of classical historiography: they are more fleeting but also more immediate; they are harder to document but also less constrained by language and space. The second edition of the SONIC MATTER Festival followed these traces through concerts, performances, installations, conversations, a club night, and a listening lounge. One emphasis was on contributions from sub-Saharan Africa, among others by artists involved in our 2022 partner festival Nyege Nyege, Uganda.

We thank all audiences and artists for taking part in SONIC MATTER Festival 2022!

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2021

What does Zurich sound like under ground? Can music-making help us learn to live in a damaged ecosystem? Do I hear differently when a concert is played for me only? From December 2 to 5, 2021, the Zurich festival SONIC MATTER invited its guests to explore these and other questions revolving around experimental music. In the backround always resonated the festival theme 2021 «TURN», which traces changes on a large and small scale. With concerts, performances, exhibitions, lounges, club events and talks, SONIC MATTER brought artists from Switzerland and abroad at a varied range of venues in the city and canton of Zurich together. One emphasis was on contributions from artists involved in our 2021 partner festival Novas Frequências, Rio de Janeiro.

We thank all audiences and artists for taking part in SONIC MATTER Festival 2021!