Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2025

The Darmstädter Ferienkurse have always been an incubator for artistic ideas and processes, discourses and international professional networks. This makes them one of the central places for the entire scene. In addition to the aim of enabling representative performances of important artistic positions, the focus is on the interconnection between the event programme and the academy – especially in 2025. The academy, which is internationally unique in its scope and reach, brings artists, performers and researchers in contact with each other in workshops, teaching situations, rehearsals, lectures and discourse formats and has increasingly permeated the festival programme in recent years. Conversely, it is important that the concert programme provides opportunities for interaction for course participants and that there is a deeper engagement with the programme.

At the suggestion of its new artistic director George Lewis, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) has expanded its portfolio to include artists from the African diaspora. ICE will also present this focus in Darmstadt, network with the instrumental and composition studios during a multi-day residency and explore topics related to this newly discovered repertoire in greater depth. The Montreal-based collective No Hay Banda will present Steven K. Takasugi’s Il Teatro Rosso and contribute to the courses on several levels: workshops and try-outs with participants from the field of composition, lectures and question and answer sessions on their particular form of organisation, open rehearsals. The Quatuor Bozzini, also from Canada, will make its debut in Darmstadt and, during its residency, will present the premiere of a new piece by Cassandra Miller, as well as reading sessions and a ‘walk-in clinic’ for all questions concerning the string quartet.

It is a real event when Musikfabrik and the Ferienkurse are able to present the premiere of Spahlinger’s new composition at the final concert. New works by Spahlinger have become rare. In addition to this premiere, Enno Poppe also conducts his own Stoff and Skull by Rebecca Saunders.

Tyshawn Sorey is a composer, brilliant drummer, multi-instrumentalist and conductor. In a large-scale concert project, participants and lecturers of the summer course will perform his series of works Autoschediasms, in which improvisation and composition merge. Another orchestral project is dedicated to the premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s CORE. Fascinated by Galina Ustwolskaja’s 2nd Symphony, Czernowin uses the same unusual instrumentation. In a two-week 3D audio lab with Brigitta Muntendorf, Natasha Barrett and Aaron Holloway-Nahum, sound directors and developers will present the possibilities of 3DSoundscape technology and open up ways of creative appropriation through practical application. Even classics of electronic music can be heard in a completely new way. The young London duo GBSR will be the resident ensemble, presenting new and older repertoire in the immersive setting in workshops and showcases.

The 2025 Darmstädter Ferienkurse are supported by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.

Further information:
internationales-musikinstitut.de

Dates

July 19 – August 2, 2025
Various locations, Darmstadt