Doors open at 7:00 PM and the concert begins at 7:15 PM. After the concert starts, entry to the hall will not be possible until the end of the concert block, approximately between 8:15 PM and 8:30 PM.

The opening of NEXT 2025 in the Large Concert Studio of the Slovak Radio will take place in cooperation with the Paris-based INA GRM (Institut National Audiovisuel, Groupe de Recherches Musicales), which was founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1951 and has since become one of the world’s most important centers of research and creation in the field of electronic music. The gala evening will also continue the rich history of the Experimental Studio in Bratislava, which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary.

For the first time in Slovakia, we will experience the impressive Acousmonium sound system. This unique “speaker orchestra” is designed specifically for the spatial interpretation of electroacoustic music and was created in 1974 by composer François Bayle. The system consists of dozens of speakers of various sizes, power and character, arranged in space so that the sound can be “played” like a musical instrument. Experiencing Acousmonium live is a unique opportunity – its precise, plastic and physical spatial projection is one of the most iconic experiences of European experimental music.

The opening evening of the festival combines archival multichannel compositions from the collection of the Experimental Studio of Bratislava Radio and the historical archive of the GRM with premieres of new commissioned works and live performances by prominent contemporary authors. Peter Kolman’s E 15 will be heard in a new spatial arrangement, premiere concert sets by BJ Nilsen, Michaela Turcerová and Drew McDowall, as well as Félicia Atkinson’s work for piano, electronics and surround sound, complemented by a composition by Bernardo Parmegiani from the GRM archive.

Acousmonium will resonate at the Bratislava Radio as a complex soundscape – an exceptional evening in which the history, present and future of electroacoustic music meet.

 

PROGRAMME:

 

Archive of Experimental studio Bratislava: Peter Kolman – E 15 (12’)

BJ Nilsen – True than Nature (25’)

Michaela Turcerová – IN FLUX⁵⁰ (23’)

 

Break

 

Archive GRM: Bernard Parmegiani – La Roue Ferris (10’45″)

Félicia Atkinson – Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) (20’18″)

Drew McDowall (30’)

 

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Peter Kolman

Composer Peter Kolman (1936 – 2022) was one of the most prominent figures of the Experimental Studio of the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava, where he also served as its director until his emigration in 1977.

The composition E 15 (1974) is typical of the author’s precise, rationally constructed, yet sonically imaginative language. He works with tape manipulation, layered structures, filtering, and careful work with dynamics and time. Here, Kolman explores microscopic sound details and transforms them into a dense, plastic form – the result is a composition that still feels fresh and precisely articulated today.

At NEXT, E ​​15 will be heard in a special multi-channel spatial arrangement (live diffusion) by members of the INA GRM team. This is a unique opportunity to hear this key work of Slovak electroacoustic history in a form that fully reveals its spatial and expressive qualities.

 

BJ Nilsen

Swedish sound artist and composer based in Amsterdam, BJ Nilsen explores the intersections of field recording, sound, space, and perception. Through subtle electronic manipulations and detailed editing, Nilsen transforms environmental recordings into layered, immersive soundscapes that inhabit the space between reality and imagination.

His new album True than Nature (2025), released on Ideologic Organ, builds on a 30-year career creating original scores and sound design for music, film, visual art, and performance. The Slovak Radio concert hall will host the concert premiere of this material in a special multi-channel version.

Nilsen began releasing music in 1991 under the moniker Morthond on the Swedish label Cold Meat Industry. From 1998 to 2015, he released works as Hazard and under his own name on the UK labels Ash International / TOUCH.

Over the years, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Chris Watson, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Karl Lemieux, Anla Courtis, Judith Hamann, Franz Graf, Anthea Caddy, Z’EV, and many others. His latest album, Irreal (2021), was released on Editions Mego.

 

Michaela Turcerová 

Musician and composer originally from Banská Bystrica, currently living in Copenhagen. She plays alto/soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and composes in the area of ​​partially open scores, (un)conventional notations, conceptual ideas and minimalism. In her work, she often deals with physical space as part of the musical experience. She leads her own musical groups doudouči ensemble and ensemble šum.um and is engaged in a solo project for modified alto saxophone called IN FLUX. She is also a member and co-composer of the band ALAWARI, Wolfskin Ensemble and performs in the formations mocean (music by Mark Ibsgaard Gregersen), Arcanepunk, Henrik Olsson’s Atumbra Ensemble, Asger Thomsen’s Rhizom and in the Prague saxophone quartet MMMM.

Commissioned by the NEXT festival  in co-production with INA GRM, she created the composition IN FLUX⁵⁰ for “live” alto saxophone, analog objects and electronics.

 

Bernard Parmegiani

French composer Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013) is a pioneer of electroacoustic and acousmatic music. His visionary approach was based on sound “sculpture” – material, space and time became extensions of the musical gesture. La Roue Ferris (1971) is a work for tape/acousmatic sound projection. Parmegiani describes a circular movement that unfolds regularly around a stationary axis, creating layers of sound of varying density: “The crackling at the beginning transforms finally into threads of light sound that evoke cirrus clouds, the ones seen in very high altitude harbouring the cries of swifts circling the thermals. Wonderment comes into existence and dies, leaving us with the illusion of duration.”

 

Félicia Atkinson

How to dwell in one’s own work, how to convey it, tame it and live with it? The work Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) by French musician and composer Félicia Atkinson is understood as a meditation – not as meditative music, but as a reflection on the act of creation itself. She draws inspiration from the work of painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

Atkinson evokes and celebrates the mystery of art in a poetic and holistic way. Combining fragmentary voices, piano passages, electronic textures and patterns, as well as field recordings, Atkinson creates music that uniquely approaches the world. The work was commissioned by INA GRM and originally presented in a multichannel premiere in 2022 and was later released in an expanded form on the Portraits GRM label (2023).

 

Drew McDowall

Drew McDowall is an artist who refuses to conform — in both music and life. McDowall mines the hallucinatory spaces that exist between reality and celestial otherness. His meditative compositions are haunting and spiritual, melding intricate modular soundscapes with cut-up samples, and deconstructing sounds into their most basic shuddering structures and shapes. The disorienting ambient mirages that result elicit terror, tender melancholy, and heavenly flickers of expansive beauty.

His backstory reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction. Growing up in the gangs of 1970’s Scotland, McDowall — fatigued by years of daily violence and the chaotic madness of that life — sought aggressive self-expression in punk and found a home in Glasgow’s rich underground music community. He moved in circles with British avant-garde pioneers such as Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, and John Balance, who helped define the early wave of industrial music. He later collaborated with Psychic TV and became a full member of the cult group Coil, where his contributions shaped their later albums.

While McDowall has adhered to electronics throughout his career, he has escaped making music confined to any one genre. In recent years, he has incorporated strings, wind instruments, church organ, and harp into his work. This diversity of approach is reflected in collaborations with artists such as Kali Malone, Caterina Barbieri, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Hiro Kone, Varg, Puce Mary, Shapednoise, Rabit, James K, Elvin Brandhi, and LEYA — several of whom have also performed at NEXT.

His first solo album Collapse was released by Dais Records in 2015, followed by Unnatural Channel (2017), The Third Helix (2018), and Agalma (2020). His 2024 album A Thread, Silvered and Trembling continues his lifelong fascination with pibroch (Gaelic ceòl mòr) — the elegiac Scottish bagpipe style traditionally used for laments and tributes, combining modal drones, shimmering dissonance, and mournful melody.

For the Acousmonium, McDowall will present a special multichannel version of his live concert set.

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Organised by A4 as part of the New Perspectives for Action project within the international collaboration Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union and supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council and Bratislava City Foundation. Part of the “Exploring Spatial Sound” project in collaboration with Paradiso, Sonic Acts and INA GRM, with support from The Creative Industries Fund NL. 

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