Listening is a skill most people lose somewhere around the age of ten, when style, taste and category arrive and start doing the work for us. The 70th International Festival of Contemporary Music proposes we get it back.
From 10 to 24 October, Caterina Barbieri directs A Child of Sound, an edition built on the idea that a child hears freely, with no stylistic expectation and no cultural convention in the way. Under that premise, sound becomes a collective catharsis, a feast of the senses, and an occasion to connect with yourself and with everyone else in the room.
The range is deliberately wide. Ancient vocal traditions meet electronic music. Afro-diasporic influences answer the voices of Italian minimalism. Origine gives deep listening a room of its own, ambient experimentation stretches the hours, and installations, site-specific performances, DJ sets and collaborations fill the days between. Biennale College Musica brings the newest voices into the same conversation.
The invitation reads simply enough: understand the music of the present without the filter of prejudice, and start to live again in the contemporary age.