Press Release

Press Contact for Unsound Festival New York:
Gamall Awad - g(AT)backspinpromo.com

Unsound Festival New York
April 1st - 10th 2011

Celebrating the concepts, ideas and joy of creative music in its many forms - from lowbrow to high - Unsound Festival has built a reputation as one of Europe’s most original events pushing boundaries. Through the evolution of a unique and visionary curatorial approach, Unsound Festival has inspired visitors and locals alike in their hometown of Krakow, Poland, since its inception in 2003. Having organized additional events in Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava, Kiev and Minsk, Unsound and their principal organizing group Fundacja Tone looked West for the first time and teamed up with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institute New York to bring a surprise-packed eleven-day festival to New York in February of 2010.

In New York and across America, music fans and the press alike embraced Unsound Festival New York as a refreshing addition to the city calendar and quickly realized that Unsound provided a very different model even for New York, where every day can feel like a music festival. Enraptured by what they saw, Urb magazine described Unsound as "scene-shifting" and declared that the festival instantly "cemented its status as one of the most important cultural festivities in New York City." While Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times that the Festival "claims a shrewdly amorphous domain: a zone in a virtual Europe (including Eastern Europe and Scandinavia) where electronics; arty, multimedia experiments; chamber-music meticulousness; punk impulses; and D.J. dance beats may all appear amid clouds of noise this festival’s aesthetic: high-tech, allusive and not to be pinned down.”

Unsound experienced perhaps their most successful Krakow event to date this past October which was praised by Fact Magazine as a festival to be lauded for "its commitment to affording artists of considerable cult and critical renown the opportunity to realize grand projects and perform in grand spaces; to instill a level of trust in these artists that most safety-first festivals are incapable of, or unwilling to, countenance." Now, with the same passion for the unusual that made them so noticeable, Unsound Festival New York is set to return to New York this coming April 2011.

Working once again with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institut New York, as well as a host of other key partners and sponsors, Fundacja Tone and Unsound are preparing to continue their mission to bring underexposed East European artists to New York and to boldly show yet again the many faces of creative music. As the Village Voice noted in February 2010, "...the purpose of the Unsound Festival is to repel the baseless, spectacle-heavy notion that only a few states in the U.S. and a few countries in Western Europe are capable of making great, weird music that is riveting, outrageous, and thought-provoking." This year, underexposed artists from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland will all feature during Unsound Festival New York alongside artists from USA, Germany, Austria, England, Spain, Switzerland and Argentina.

Unsound Festival New York starts Wednesday April 6th with Unsound's largest event to date - the festival’s official opening - at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Alice Tully Hall. Presented with Sacrum Profanum, Unsound’s sister festival from Krakow, and organized with the Krakow Festival Office and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, this official Unsound Festival opening night event will feature the USA debut of “We Don’t Need Other Worlds. We Need Mirrors - Music for Solaris” - a special Unsound commission from Ben Frost, Daníel Bjarnason and Sinfonietta Cracovia.

Unsound Festival New York will be preceded this year by a special series of events taking place Friday April 1st to Tuesday April 5th; Unsound Festival New York Labs will present a series of events, workshops and panel discussions under the banner “Labs” that explore the idea of a "Festival as a laboratory." The concept is that a festival environment is one in which artists can explore creativity in new ways. This theme was developed by European Cities of Advanced Sound (ECAS) and will also be presented this year at CTM – Club Transmediale (Berlin, February 2011), FutureEverything (Manchester, May 2011), Todays Art (The Hague, September 2011), CYNETART (Dresden, November 2011) and others.

Artists appearing at Unsound Festival New York include APPLEBLIM (UK), A.R.P (USA), ATOM TM (Germany/ Chile), BADAWI (USA), JULIANNA BARWICK (USA), BETHANY BENZUR (USA), DANÍEL BJARNASON (Iceland), BLONDES (USA), LIZZI BOUGATSOS (USA), KABIR CARTER (USA), CHRISTINA CHATFIELD (USA), COH (Russia), CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO (Argentina), SINFONIETTA CRACOVIA (Poland), DAVE Q (USA), DEAF CENTER (Norway), DEMDIKE STARE (UK), DORIAN CONCEPT (Austria), PETAR DUNDOV (Croatia), TAYLOR DEUPREE (USA), BRYAN JACOBS, DAMIAN VOLPE, MATT ROCKER, ROBERT EGGERS (USA), ELEVEN TIGERS (Lithuania), EMERALDS (USA), BRIAN ENO & NICK ROBERTSON (UK), JAMES FERRARO (USA), BEN FROST (Australia / Iceland), CARLOS GIFFONI (USA), GLITTERBUG (Germany), CLAY GOLD (Russia / China), HENRYK MIKOLAJ GÓRECKI (Poland), HARALD GROSSKOPF (Germany), LAUREL HALO (USA), HATI (Poland), ALAN HOWARTH (USA), INSTANT COFFEE (Lisle Ellis / M.C. Scmidt / Jason Willett) (USA), KAMIL JANKOWIAK (Poland / USA), JASON KAHN (USA/ Switzerland), RICHARD KAMERMAN (USA), SAMULI KEMPPI (Finland), KiNK (Bulgaria), KODE9 (UK), FELIX KUBIN / BORIS D HEGENBART-MATSUI (Germany), PETER KUTIN (Austria), LILLEVAN (Germany), LONE (UK), LUSTMORD (USA), MERCE (Shelly Burgon & Maria Chavez) (USA), MKM (Switzerland), MORDANT MUSIC (UK), NORBERT MÖSLANG (Switzerland), GÜNTER MÜLLER (Germany / Switzerland), OCTAVE ONE (USA), AKI ONDA (USA / Japan), ED OSBORN (USA), PAMELA Z (USA), THE PANTHOM (Poland), KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI (Poland), PINK ELLN (Germany), ROBERT PIOTROWICZ (Poland), JUREK PRZEZDZIECKI (Poland), PULSHAR (Spain), RAIME (UK), STEVE REICH (USA), RUNAWAY (USA), MARCUS SCHMICKLER (Germany), SEPALCURE (USA), RONNI SHENDAR (Germany), ERIKA SHERMAN (USA), THE SKULL DEFEKTS featuring DANIEL HIGGS (Sweden / USA), PINK SKULL (USA), SPATIAL (UK), MORTON SUBOTNICK (USA), SVARTE GREINER (Norway), DAWID SZCZESNY (Poland), TIN MAN (Finland / USA), VOID OV VOICES (Hungary), PAUL WIRKUS (Germany), C. SPENCER YEH (USA), ANNA ZARADNY (Poland), ZEPPY ZEP (Poland), Z'EV (UK), ZOMES (USA) and more. Please note: Not all these acts will be performing - please read full press releases for more exact information re: context for all artists mentioned.

Unsound Festival New York has something for everyone from brilliant contemporary classical music to death metal, from modern club sounds to long overlooked innovators. Unsound Festival New York and Unsound Festival New York Labs will surprise, delight and challenge. We hope to see you there.