CONCERTS / WORKSHOPS / TALKS
AN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR EXPERIMENTAL CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND SOUND IN GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN
Shifting spaces: The 2026 edition of Göteborg Art Sounds Festival invites artistic practices of sound that engage with spatiality, reconsidering spaces as dynamic fields of relation. Space is never fixed. It is acoustic, social, political, and embodied. Sound can expand or contract distances, alter our sense of duration, reveal invisible relations, and reconfigure how we inhabit environments together.
TUESDAY 22 SEPT. @ WÄRENSTAMS BORÅS
_CONCERT
Hardi Kurda’s works defy the boundaries of music and sound through his evocative interplay of suggestive, unconventional sounds, unexpected silences, and textured noise. He includes interactive approaches to his works, such as the ECG monitor, Sounding Carpet and the interactive radio antenna, where he explores noises that may have been considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, untold, forgotten, or simply noises from nowhere, without a place or destination.
Hardi will perform “Your Resonance” - a work developed from his mother’s health check diary. Hardi is connected to an ECG system that translates his bodily activity into deep sub-bass sound, modulated by his breathing. Audience members are invited to take a heart rate test on arrival; their data is used in real time to shape and control the sound system alongside the performer’s ECG signals.
Hardi Kurda [IQ-KR]
22. 09
19:00h
@WÄRENSTAMS
Herrljungagatan 15, 506 30 Borås
TUESDAY 22 SEPT. @ OCEANEN GÖTEBORG
_CONCERT
In Motion is a concert series that brings together students from the bachelor's and master's programs in Improvisation Performance, Improvisation and World Music, and Improvisation – The Composing Musician. It offers a unique opportunity for musicians to explore a specific theme in depth, collaborate across disciplines, and develop their own artistic voices. In Motion is about finding freedom in change, embracing challenges, and growing as an artist.
This concert focuses on the music and legacy of Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane, inviting participants to engage with their artistic visions through interpretation, improvisation, and creative exploration.
In collaboration with The Academy of Music and Drama.
Academy of Music & Drama
22. 09
19:00h
@OCEANEN
Stigbergstorget 8, 414 63 Göteborg
WEDNESDAY 23 SEPT. @ KONSTKOLLEKTIVET MÖLNDAL
_WORKSHOP
This workshop delves into the artistic potential of electronic components and operators - such as logic gates and capacitors - by using their conventional functions as a starting point for creative exploration. Participants will learn the basics of electronics and how to read fundamental schematics; no background knowledge in music or electronics is required. Participants will experiment with ways to intentionally introduce "new complexity" into these circuits, creating unique, unexpected outcomes that serve as the foundation for a new instrument and aesthetic. Through hands-on practice, participants will examine a curated selection of components to identify their unique artistic attributes. The workshop will culminate in a short collaborative improvisation session, using these custom-built circuits as our primary sound sources. Bring any conductive objects and an open mind.
WORKSHOP: Artistic Approaches to Analog Circuits with Ji Youn Kang [KR/NL]
23. 09
13:00h
@KONSTKOLLEKTIVET MÖLNDAL
Pixbovägen 5, 431 36 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Ji Youn Kang is a Korean composer, performer, and sound artist based in The Hague. Much of her work is informed by the rites of Korean Shamanism, and many of her pieces are written for Wave Field Synthesis systems, exploring the relationship between musical and physical space. She is also active as a solo performer, exploring ways to combine three sound domains on stage: acoustic instruments, analogue and digital sound, using DIY analogue synthesizers and live processing on a laptop. She currently teaches at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire.
Ji Youn Kang [KR-NL]
23. 09
19:00h
@KONSTKOLLEKTIVET MÖLNDAL
Pixbovägen 5, 431 36 Göteborg
WEDNESDAY 23 SEPT. @ SYMBIONT, GÖTEBORG
_WORKSHOP
An improvised music workshop grounded in listening, experimentation, and collective care, led by Farida Amadou. Farida Amadou is a self-taught electric bassist and sound sculptor based in Brussels. Known for her raw, intuitive approach to improvisation, she has become a vital force in experimental music.
WORKSHOP: Farida Amadou [BE]
23. 09
10:00h
@SYMBIONT
Textilgatan 14, 415 11 Göteborg
WEDNESDAY 23 SEPT. @ OCEANEN, GÖTEBORG
_CONCERT
Students from the Individual Musicians' Programme at the Academy of Music and Drama perform music written and arranged specifically for the chosen venue of the day, showcasing a wide musical range as well as the students’ curiosity in exploring new constellations and sounding expressions.
In collaboration with The Academy of Music and Drama.
Academy of Music & Drama
23. 09
19:00h
@OCEANEN
Stigbergstorget 8, 414 63 Göteborg
_CONCERT
ensemble hybrid is a member-run ensemble active in contemporary music. Founded in 2022, and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, the ensemble focuses on collaborative work processes and seek to work with composers and artists who uses experimental approaches to sound.
For Göteborg Art Sounds Festival 2026 they will premiere pieces by Elias Frisk, Marcus Hesse and Love Carbin.
ensemble hybrid (SE)
23. 09
19:30h
@OCEANEN
Stigbergstorget 8, 414 63 Göteborg
Tickets soon to be released!
_CONCERT
Hardi Kurda’s works defy the boundaries of music and sound through his evocative interplay of suggestive, unconventional sounds, unexpected silences, and textured noise. He includes interactive approaches to his works, such as the ECG monitor, Sounding Carpet and the interactive radio antenna, where he explores noises that may have been considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, untold, forgotten, or simply noises from nowhere, without a place or destination. Through using radio frequencies as sound material, Hardi bridges the physical and metaphysical to create Urgent Listening, based on his listening experience when he illegally moved to Europe.
For Göteborg Art Sounds Festival Hardi will perform “Your Resonance” - a work developed from his mother’s health check diary. Hardi is connected to an ECG system that translates his bodily activity into deep sub-bass sound, modulated by his breathing. Audience members are invited to take a heart rate test on arrival; their data is used in real time to shape and control the sound system alongside the performer’s ECG signals.
Hardi Kurda (IQ-KR)
23. 09
20:30h
@OCEANEN
Stigbergstorget 8, 414 63 Göteborg
THURSDAY 24 SEPT. @ FOLKTEATERN, GÖTEBORG
_CONCERT
Students from the Individual Musicians' Programme at the Academy of Music and Drama perform music written and arranged specifically for the chosen venue of the day, showcasing a wide musical range as well as the students’ curiosity in exploring new constellations and sounding expressions.
In collaboration with The Academy of Music and Drama.
Academy of Music & Drama
23. 09
19:00h
@FOLKTEATERN
Olof Palmes plats 5, 413 30 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Farida Amadou is a self-taught electric bassist and sound sculptor based in Brussels. Known for her raw, intuitive approach to improvisation, she has become a vital force in experimental music, collaborating with artists such as Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, and Moor Mother. Blending free jazz, noise, and deep rhythmic structure, Amadou creates immersive soundscapes that balance intensity with clarity. Her solo work, including the acclaimed When It Rains It Pours (2024), showcases her unique ability to shape spontaneous sonic worlds with power, precision, and emotional depth.
Amadou neither emulates the virtuosos of the electric bass, nor does she use the instrument as a pure sound generator that merely emits humming and feedback. She takes a completely independent and unique approach. This freedom enables her to create an overwhelming wall of sound, as well as simple, clear structures that are rhythmically concise yielding a wide associative space that lands somewhere between free jazz and noise. If there's one musician in the last decade that you may hear in wildly diverse musical contexts it is Farida Amadou.
Farida Amadou (BE)
24. 09
19:30h
@FOLKTEATERN
Olof Palmes plats 5, 413 30 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Ji Youn Kang is a Korean composer, performer, and sound artist based in The Hague. Much of her work is informed by the rites of Korean Shamanism, and many of her pieces are written for Wave Field Synthesis systems, exploring the relationship between musical and physical space. She is also active as a solo performer, exploring ways to combine three sound domains on stage: acoustic instruments, analogue and digital sound, using DIY analogue synthesizers and live processing on a laptop. She currently teaches at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire.
For Göteborg Art Sounds Festival she will perform “machi-nory”. This performance unfolds as a live construction of an unstable sonic machine, built from circuits, metal plates and electromagnetic feedback where sound emerges from shifting relationships between materials, performer, signal and space. Through acts of tinkering, the system reveals the hidden vitality of matter and its behaviors.
Ji Youn Kang (KR/NL)
24. 09
20:30h
@FOLKTEATERN
Olof Palmes plats 5, 413 30 Göteborg
FRIDAY 25 SEPT. @ VASAKYRKAN, GÖTEBORG
_CONCERT
Students from the Individual Musicians' Programme at the Academy of Music and Drama perform music written and arranged specifically for the chosen venue of the day, showcasing a wide musical range as well as the students’ curiosity in exploring new constellations and sounding expressions.
In collaboration with The Academy of Music and Drama.
Academy of Music & Drama
23. 09
19:00h
@VASAKYRKAN
Vasa Kyrkoplan 5, 411 27 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Swedish saxophonist and composer Lisen Rylander Löve works across jazz, improvisation, and experimental music. Through years of artistic exploration, she has developed a distinctive voice that expands the possibilities of contemporary jazz. She has released several acclaimed albums with The Splendor and Here’s To Us, and spent more than a decade as part of the pioneering electronic group Midaircondo, originally formed as a trio. She works in a wide range of ensembles and collaborations, both in Sweden and internationally. Improvisation and a deep engagement with sound remain central to her practice.
Her music is often contrast-rich, uncompromising, and highly suggestive in its use of timbre and form. OCEANS (2019), her debut solo album, combines saxophone, voice, and kalimba with field recordings and live electronics. The follow-up, In Fields Of Time (2025), further explores the meeting of acoustic instruments and electronic processing, and was nominated for both a Grammis Award and a Manifest Award for Jazz Album of the Year.
Lisen Rylander Löve (SE)
25. 09
19:30h
@VASAKYRKAN
Vasa Kyrkoplan 5, 411 27 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Áine O’Dwyer is a multi-disciplinary artist, a multi-instrumentalist, composer/performer whose work is informed by both the conceptual concerns of sound-art and traditional compositional techniques, embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience and architecture. She has created works internationally for large-scale and intimate settings which often allow for both planned and chance events to co-exist. O’Dwyer’s work has been informed by her study of the individual idiosyncrasies found in each pipe-organ and notably her realisation that each individual organ is meticulously tuned to the measurements of the building in which it is housed, allowing it to connect intimately with its surrounding architecture.
Recent works include; 'Old Songs’, a commissioned performance installation for Oscillation festival in Brussels 2025 and ‘Sing in the Dark’ for voice and Acousmonium at Archipel festival, Switzerland 2024. She has produced several albums which embrace the notion of ‘holding space as extension of instrument’, including her most recent ‘Turning in Space’, a site-specific work using post-collagist techniques.
Áine O'Dwyer (IE)
25. 09
20:30h
@VASAKYRKAN
Vasa Kyrkoplan 5, 411 27 Göteborg
SATURDAY 26 SEPT. @ ATALANTE GÖTEBORG
_CONCERT
Like a haunting melody emerging from a distant past, buried in the depths of timeless memory, the music of Clara Levy (violin) and Victor Guaita (alto) envelops us in a state of weightlessness and introspection. Songs of Erosion offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a 13th-century collection of monodies, viewed through the lens of erosion. Designed as a collaborative and evolving space, the project takes on various forms depending on the context, whether performative or installation-based. It explores different scales of time – geological, biological, historical, and musical – through sequences or the layering of repetitive instructions, as they ask: what is left of these 800 years old songs?
Clara Lévy is a French violinist and composer. She has for the past few years been developing solo projects questioning in turn the conditions of listening and the dramaturgy of the concert (Outre-Nuit), or the sometimes blurred edges between interpretation and composition (13 Visions). Victor Guaita Igual is focused on the performance of new music and other sonic explorations, with a masters in Viola with Paul de Clerck in Brussels and another in String Quartet with Oliver Wille in Hannover..
Clara Lévy &
Victor Guaita Igual (FR)
26. 09
19:30h
@ATALANTE
Övre Husargatan 1, 411 22 Göteborg
_CONCERT
Harmonic Space Orchestra is an ensemble of Berlin-based musicians specialising in the research and performance of microtonal music, particularly its relationship to acoustics and rational intonation/just intonation, using unique collaborative models. With over half a decade of experience working together synthesising the knowledge and practices of its members, themselves world-leading experts in the field of microtonality, HSO is the most accomplished ensemble in the world dedicated entirely to working with and investigating this kind of harmony.
For Göteborg Art Sounds Festival 2026 they present the world premiere of the piece “Triangulations” by award winning composer Catherine Lamb (US). The piece is a deep exploration into areas where three points converge and form a shape. Points will be extracted from conceptual, theoretical, socio-political, ethical, poetical, fantastical, physical, and material elements alike. The question is: what occurs musically in space and time when three distinct points converge in the ensemble experience?
The commission of Triangulations by Catherine Lamb is made possible by support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and initiative neue musik berlin e.V. through co-commission with Harmonic Space Orchestra.
Harmonic Space Orchestra (DE) + Catherine Lamb (US)
26. 09
20:30h
@ATALANTE
Övre Husargatan 1, 411 22 Göteborg
Tickets soon to be released!
Göteborg Art Sounds Festival 2026 is made possible with support from Kulturrådet, Göteborgs stad, Västra Götalandsregionen, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, Goethe-Institut, Goethe-Institut Schweden, Initiative New Music Berlin, Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse, Lundsgrens understödsfond, University of Gothenburg, Wärenstams, Konstkollektivet Mölndal
© 2026 Göteborg Art Sounds Festival — All Rights Reserved