A festival in two stages
LEM Festival, dedicated to experimental and advanced music, is divided into two editions, the first in May and the second in October.
Two for one. LEM Festival, the Barcelona event that is a major reference in sound experimentation, returns next year with a new format, divided into two annual events, one in May and the other a few months later. From the 15th to the 24th of May, music for dauntless ears in different venues in the city, including Museu de la Música de Barcelona, La Kontra hall in Gràcia, Auditori del Centre Cívic La Sedeta and Soda Acústic.
You probably already know the festival, because it has been held since 1996 and therefore has a long history. Behind there is Gràcia Territori Sonor, a collective dedicated to sound experimentation and the dissemination of new sounds that was created, among others, by the late Víctor Nubla.
This year's edition begins in the Keyboard Room of the Museu de la Música, where on Thursday, 15 May, at 7 p.m. (admission is free), you have an appointment with the sound artist and visual poet Alfredo Costa Monteiro. He will perform Fragments d'oblit, a composition created with recordings of instruments from the museum's reserve, which normally cannot be seen. You may know the artist from the Superelvis or Cremaster projects, but in his solo work he explores the material nature of sound, using everyday objects, modified instruments, electroacoustics and poetry in different languages.
On Thursday, the 16th, at La Kontra de Gràcia, the debut of Comegente, a Madrid-based collective made up of Jay Olivier and Susana Confeti from Madrid. They are a duet halfway between dark ambient and doom jazz, which is inspired both by silence and by the phenomena that break it. In the same concert, another project from Madrid, Northwest, created in 2015 by the multi-instrumentalists and composers Mariuca García-Lomas and Ignacio Simón. They sound somewhere between contemporary classical, avant-garde electronica, psychedelia, minimalism and experimental pop.
On Saturday, 17 May, the action moves to the Auditorium of the La Sedeta Civic Centre, where a double concert has also been programmed, starting with three masters of free improvisation: the contrabassist Eduard Altaba, the percussionist Patxi Valera and the trumpeter Pablo ‘Pope’ Volt. The second concert on Saturday the 17th combines improvisation and singer-songwriters' songs. It will be given by Tim Hodgkinson (co-founder of Henry Cow, composer and multi-instrumentalist) who returns to the LEM twenty-one years after his first performance. This time he is accompanied by the Japanese singer Atsuko Kamura. You will listen to her, accompanied by Hodgkinson on Hawaiian guitar, clarinets and saxophones. With Haiku, they toured Japan, but the ensemble has not stopped evolving.
Among the innovative proposals is that of Edurne Arizu, a composer who has been working for four years on a dialogue between her compositions inspired by nature and an artificial intelligence. What happens when your partner in artistic creation is an algorithm? Come and see it on Sunday, 21, at 7 p.m., in the Keyboard Room of the Museu de la Música (entrance is free).
A special Nocturna Discordia session at the Soda Acústic with Lidia Facerias, Oskar Salat and Soren Alcaraz, Clara Torner, Yeonathan Shachar and Vasco Trilla (Thursday, 22nd); the sound ensemble ‘canviant i espontani’ by Cibrán (Riccardo Massari Spiritini and Adrià Bofarull; Friday, 23; at LaKontra de Gràcia) and resident artist from Gràcia Territori Sonor Laura Llaneli (Friday, 23; at LaKontra de Gràcia) form part of the programme.
La Sedeta will host the end of the festival, with a performance on Saturday 24 May by Art Quartet, a jazz, free improvisation and experimental project led by drummer Genís Bagés, with Leonor Falcón (violin and viola), Clara Lai (piano) and Àlex Reviriego (double bass). On the same day and on the same stage, two greats of experimental music will perform under the name of Electric Totems. They are the Frenchman Pierre Bastien, an essential reference on the European experimental scene, and the Valencian Dr. Truna, who fuses electroacoustics with expanded classical instruments.
Remember that the second part of LEM Festival 2025 will take place in October and that, in addition to the occasional tickets, subscriptions are already on sale, which can be valid both for the month of May (30 €) and for May and October together (50 €).
If you like experimentation in sound and the newest and most advanced music, they are waiting for you at LEM Festival. But first, check the website for the full programme and buy your tickets.