The A•DEvantgarde festival was founded in 1991 by

Sandeep Bhagwati Sandeep Bhagwati (born 4 June 1963) is a German composer of western classical music and an academic teacher. Career Sandeep Bhagwati was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India to a German mother and an Indian father. Living in Germany since the a ...

and

Moritz Eggert Moritz Eggert (born 25 November 1965 in Heidelberg) is a German composer and pianist. Life Moritz Eggert began his studies in piano and composition in 1975 at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt (with Wolfgang Wagenhaeuser and Claus Kü ...

. A•DEvantgarde is a music festival held every 2 years in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

, Germany. In 2007 the theme of the festival was on

totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...

where the festival debuted the

60x60 60x60 is a collection of 60 electroacoustic or acousmatic works from 60 different composers/artists, each work 60 seconds or less in duration. 60x60 project showcases sixty new works, each sixty seconds or less, by sixty composers in a continuous ...

project's Munich Mix featuring works with the theme of

oppression Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination ...

and totalitarianism. In 2017, the festival will be directed by Samuel Penderbayne and Alexander Strauch under the motto 'Corragio' (courage), featuring local, national and international artists including Ensemble Nikel (Berlin/Tel Aviv), NAMES (Salzburg) and The Breakout Ensemble (Munich).

History of the A•DEvantgarde Festival

"A•DEvantgarde" mixes the French words "avant" and "devant," to mean temporally and spatially progressing; an apt description of its intent. The A•DEvantgarde Festival was formed in the late 1980s by a passionate group of young German composers who wanted to break from the traditional or

Darmstadt School Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who were associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Darmstädter Ferienkurse) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany, and who shared some aesthe ...

of serial composition that was dominated by eminent new music composers of the late 20th century including Pierre Boulez,

Bruno Maderna Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. Life Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s th ...

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...

and more. Professor

Wilhelm Killmayer Wilhelm Killmayer (21 August 1927 – 20 August 2017) was a German composer of classical music, a conductor and an academic teacher of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München from 1973 to 1992. He composed symphonies and s ...

championed the students' work, encouraging them to work together to present their music rather than to engage competitively for the diminutive space allotted to young composers in the larger musical venues. Professor Killmayer took on composer

as his teaching assistant, opening up a new level of resources for the young composer. Bhagwati put together a first series of chamber concerts aimed at presenting the work of young composers called the A•DEvantgarde and even wrote a manifesto of the A•DEvantgarde which stated the group's intention to create and promote music that is without constraints or dictates—particularly as regards serial music. The document continues to be regarded as controversial today. The first festival was held in 1991 and met with great success; in fact, the A•DEvantgarde Festival required immediate expansion in its second year in order to accommodate the great number of attendees. The second festival in 1992 was of a larger scale and was open to composers internationally. Most importantly, it upheld the ideal that young composers should judge and decide upon the work of other young composers, and the core group went to great lengths to ensure that this process was consistently carried out. Again outgrowing its capacity in the second year, the A*Devantgarde Festival was for financial reasons forced to scale back in 1993. This occasioned a move to the New Theater, an intimate and minimalist space in which the performances thrived. At the New Theater the popular audience continued to grow and the Festival began to receive critical acclaim. The original founders, foremost among them

and

, felt that they were already coming to an age where they should step aside and let the younger composers make many of the aesthetic decisions. The group opted to use a democratic method whereby all members voted on which compositions to include and how best to direct the Festival, a process that was "laborious but always rewarding." In the following years the A•DEvantgarde Festival began to receive performances across Germany, becoming a new standard for aspiring composers. The upcoming festival in 2017 includes a mixture of concert performances and interdisciplinary projects involving artists from the free-scene. The centrepiece of the festival will be a 3-day 'Happening' in front of the Gasteig Centre for Arts and Culture in Munich on the theme 'An Artistic Occupy'. Broadly speaking, the music of the 1% will be laid bare on the steps of the Gastieg, the 'Wall St. of Culture' in Munich, and all performances will have a focus on 'inclusion'. Other features of the festival include a 'Quodlibet' with various choirs from the local scene, an evening of premieres of works setting the poetry of Ernst Toller (and associates), and concerts by Ensemble Nikel (Berlin/Tel Aviv) and NAMES (Salzburg). The artistic directors for 2017 are Samuel Penderbayne and Alexander Strauch.http://www.adevantgarde.de/veranstaltung/festival-14-in-planung

References

External links

AdevantGarde.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:A DEvantgarde Electronic music festivals in Germany Music festivals established in 1991 1991 establishments in Germany

History of the A•DEvantgarde Festival

See also

References

External links