Biennale Musica 2025: The star within

WEBWIRE – Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Meredith Monk,Songs of Ascension Shrine(installation, Arsenale, Sala dArmi E, 10 am – 6 pm); a talk with William Basinski (Arsenale, LSD Centre, 5 pm – 6 pm); listening session with Lorenzo Senni (Arsenale, LSD Centre, 6 pm – 10 pm).

The star within

The Star Withinis the title of the69^thInternational Festival of Contemporary Music, that runs in Venice fromOctober 11-25. A poetical-symbolic image that, in the words of the director Caterina Barbieri, is the desire for great things and for vastness. Spark of new worlds, it opens us to infinity. A vibration that permeates the cosmos and pierces through us with awe, from molecule to planetary motion, sound escapes the boundaries of the ego and opens us up to the encounter with the Other the unknown.

The Festival will explorecosmic music. Through using this poetic expression, writes Caterina Barbieri, I am not referring to a specific musical style or tradition but rather to thegenerative power of music to create new worlds, beyond rigid definitions of genre or historical affiliations. […]In the ecstasy of listening, rigid notions of time and space dissolve:music teaches us much about the relativity and limits of human perception. In this it is similar toVeniceand itsvocation to mutability: the play of reflections, the vanishing perspectives, the perpetual motion of water and light that dissolve boundaries and open to the space of the multiple and the infinite.

The Festivals programme is rooted in electronic music and minimalism, but then branches off into various directions that explore connections between past and present, bringing together musical traditions that are apparently distant from one another in style, era, and geographical area, and are the expression of a community: there areforays into ancient music, contemporary music, folk music, drone music, techno, and Afrofuturism. Programming through resonancethat offers the most vivid and fluid gaze possible onto the present time, representing the music of today in its richness, diversity, and inclusivity.

1. Projects and artists

The following area selection of the projects and artists featured in the Festival:
Amusical procession on the waterby the multidisciplinary artist and musician of Bolivian originChuquimamani-Condoriis theFestivals opening event, to celebrate and restore the value of sound as a collective ritual.A musical procession of small boats will glide down the canals of Venice and culminate in a live concert by Los Thuthanaka, the duo composed of Chuquimamani-Condori and his brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, in front of the basin of the Gaggiandre at the Arsenale.
Anothercommission by Biennale Musicathat engages with the presence of water is the new monumental work by the avant-garde American composerWilliam Basinski,who reimagines the tape loops ofGarden of Brokenessfora number ofgrandpianos,percussions,andvaporettomotors, a world premiere in Venice.
Plus:Resonant Vessel, by the Japanese sound artistYosuke Fujita, alias FujiIIIIIIIIIIIta, is a site-specific work that explores the generative power of sound and water; he has created his own 11-pipe organ that interacts with a system of water tanks, in which liquid and air interact to generate a landscape of tones in constant evolution. TheTeatro alle Tese is transformed into a sound chamber, becoming a vessel that navigates the fluid interaction between the terrestrial and the cosmic.

The Festival will host theEuropean premiereofThe Expanding Universe, a seminal work created between 1974 and 1977 byLaurie Spiegel, a forerunner of electronic experimentation at the dawn of its analogic applications. The work explores the relation between sound and cosmogony, reinterpreted by theDither Quartet, an electric guitar quartet from New York, known for its versatile interpretation of experimental repertories.
Another pioneer of electronics in the analogic era is the Italian-AmericanSuzanne Ciani, who will participate at the Festival in a new and stimulating collaboration withActress. A transgenerational musical meeting that merges the fluid and organic style of Cianis expressivity on Buchla synthesizers with the rhythmic eclecticism of Actress so-called R&B Concrte.
There will be a rare appearance by theKamigaku Ensemble, originally founded byCatherine Christer Hennix; on the occasion of the Festival, the ensemble will reunite for a special, site-specific performance in tribute to the Swedish composer who passed away in late 2023. A unique figure for the abundance of her artistic research, which ranges from composition to performance, installations, poetry, visual art, and mathematics, Hennix is another pioneering female figure, whose work has only recently been rediscovered and properly recognized.
The German multi-instrumentalist and composerMoritz Von Oswaldwill present the Italian premiere ofSilencio, a collaboration with a16-voice choirchallenges and expands the boundaries of electronic music and the traditions of choral music, intertwining the organic with the electronic in masterful ways.

From historical minimalismto some of the most unusual voices in contemporary music, which have opened new and surprising pathways in this musical expression. The Swedish composer and organistEllen Arkbro, a former member of the Kamigaku ensemble founded by Catherine Christer Hennix, will present anew composition, commissionedby the Festival, forthree viola da gambas, a work that continues her exploration of harmonic sound and its transcendental qualities.
Another artist who explores the fusion between acoustic instrumentation and electronic synthesis is the ItalianAgneseMenguzzato, trained in violin and Renaissance lute; she will be in Venice to present a new work for electric and eight-string guitars entitledUndici.
MaximeDenucis a musician who merges the expressive abundance and emotional power of the church organ with a contemporary electronic music sensibility; she will present theItalian premiereofElevations, an installation that incorporates the inspiration of the dub techno aesthetic into the fragile ephemeral sound of an organ controlled by computer via midi specifically created by the artist with the Belgian organ-maker Tony Decap. The Festival will open withInto the Blue,aworld premiereby the Norwegian saxophonistBendik Giske, the star of performances that transform the saxophone into an extension of his body, making the act of playing music an experience that is as visual and physical as it is acoustic. A unique voice in contemporarypercussion,Enrico Malatestaexplores the physical nature of sound through an approach that is both minimal and radical at the same time. He will perform theworld premiereof the compositionSolo VIby the German composer and organistJakob Ullmannfor percussion and audio reproduction devices; andOccam XXVI(2018), which the French pioneer of electronic and drone musicliane Radiguewrote specifically for Enrico Malatesta.

The Festival will present many connections betweendifferent musical traditions that push the envelope of contemporary music.Peacock Dreamsis the title of the concert performed by the Egyptian poet, rapper, composer, and vocalistAbdullah Miniawy, whose verses resound throughout the Middle East, with the trombonistsJules BoittinandRobinson Khoury. A new trio that freely intermingles baroque and operatic influences, Sufi and Coptic themes, and music from the Arabian Peninsula, blended together with the chaotic symphony of Cairo traffic.

2. Projects and artists

A reference point of experimental electronic music, known for his work using the microtonal Colundi Sequence,Perlhas constructed his own sound universe in continuous expansion, made of digital sounds inspired by instruments and natural elements. In Venice,Perl will present a site-specific musical concert in quadraphonic sound for the Teatro alle Tese, in collaboration with Melissa Briand-Speirs.
A pioneering figure in glitch music,Christian Fenneszwill present an expanded version created especially for Biennale Musica of his seminal workVenice, an absolute manifesto with the unmistakable signature sound of the Viennese guitarist and electronic musician.
Thecult drone metal duoSunn O))),formed byStephen OMalleyandGreg Anderson, whose monolithic sound evokes the transcendent and transformative power of distortion, resonance, and volume, will be in Venice with a set created for Biennale Musica.

The vocal ensembleGrandelavoixled by Bjrn Schmelzer, who founded it in 1999 in Antwerp, brings itstransformative approach to ancient music tothe Festival withEpitaphs of Afterwardness. At Biennale Musica, they will present a programme in which theMesse de Notre DamebyGuillaume de Machaut, an absolute masterpiece of Medieval religious polyphonic music, dialogues with the great revolutionaries of the twentieth century Gyrgy Kurtg, Gyrgy Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis.
Aligned with the theme of the Festival that explores music as a generative principle and form of cosmogony, theFontanaMIXEnsemble proposes a repertory that fosters a dialogue between two figures who come from different historical and geographical contexts but share a focused research into the metaphysical nature of the cosmic dimension of sound:Giacinto Scelsi, the visionary Italian composer who celebrates the 125^thanniversary of his birth this year, andVahid Hosseini, a composer born in Tehran in 1984, who will present thepremiereof a new version for ensemble of his compositionLe sensibilit delle tenebre.

Afrofuturist experimentalism and forms of Black-rooted electronic music innovationtraverse the Festival. With the above-mentionedActress, who has channeled her explorations of the Afrofuturist language into clubbing. And with the theorist, musician, and cultural criticDeForrest Brown Jr., who presents theItalian premiereof his electronic projectSpeakerMusic,a pulsating and high-velocity exploration of rhythm, improvisation, and sonic futurism that channels the African-American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music.
The Belgian-Congolese musician and artistNkisi (alias Melika Ngombe Kolongo), who has presented her works at Tate Modern, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Centre Pompidou, will present in Venice theworld premiereof the most recent evolution of her research into the archeology of ethnographic sound. Nkisis work combines percussive influences from the musical traditions of Central and Western Africa, forming rave, noise, and industrial sounds that explore the historical memory and collective rituals tied to sound and states of trance.
A key figure of the second techno wave in Detroit, where he was born and raised, and still lives today,Carl Craigbrings his visionary sound to the Festival with aDJsetthat embodies the citys rich legacy of Afrofuturism and sonic innovation.

Thecellist and singer from GuatemalaMabe Fratti, recognized for her ability to interweave classical training and experimental research in sound, will present asite-specific performancein collaboration with the Venezuelan artistI. la Catlicaand the Mexican drummerGibrn Andrade.
On the Festivals opening night, there will be theworld premiereofTraveling LightbyRafael Toral, a new work that continues his exploration of jazz harmonies through the expressive possibilities of guitar dialoguing with acoustic soloists the clarinetistJos Bruno Parrinha, the saxophonistRodrigo Amado, the saxhorn playerYaw Tembe, and the flautistClara Saleiro.On the Festivals closing evening,Ecco2kwill present in Venice anextended and immersive set on the borderline between performance and DJ set.

Biennale College: 235 applications from 35 countries throughout the worldwere sent to Biennale College Musica which, aligned with the Festivals theme that explores music as a form of cosmogony, will select5musicalprojectsliveperformancesoracousmaticcompositionsdiffusedthroughmultiplechannels. These works will debut at the69^thInternational Festival of Contemporary Musicat the end of the programme of residence, research, creation, and production that the selected musicians will follow in Venice over the course ofthree sessionsbetween May and October.

Thementorsof the selected musicians, who come from different fields of artistic and theoretical research in contemporary music (from the field of academic research to performance practice, from audiovisual multimedia research to club culture, from electroacoustic music to sound design), will be:Ellen Arkbro, DeForrest Brown Jr., Chuquimamani-Condori, Thierry Coduys, Lorenzo Senni,andMarcel Weber (MFO).

Thanks

Our thanks go to theItalian Ministry of Culturefor its important contribution and to theVeneto Regionfor its support of the programmes in the Dance Music Theatre departments of La Biennale di Venezia.

Media partnerof the Dance Music Theatredepartments is once againRai. Through its information channels and Rai cultura – in particular the TV channel Rai 5 and Radio3 the various activities taking place in Venice will be described and offered to the public.

We would like to thank the following for their collaboration:Comune di Venezia, Fondazione Forte Marghera,Fondazione Teatro La Fenice,Teatro Stabile del Veneto Carlo Goldoni, Polo Museale Veneziano – Ministero della Cultura, la Marina Militare e Difesa Servizi, Fondazione Forte Marghera, and APS Live artscultures ETS.

Our consolidated collaboration continues withVela Venezia Unica, a commercial company of the City of Venice specialized in mobility and marketing, with an agreement of reciprocal promotion and visibility.

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