Opening

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

The festival will once again open with a promenade concert. The three interconnected halls P1, KMH, and K4 invite visitors to move fluidly through the sounds.

We have invited many Hamburg musicians, composers, and performers for 2026, with whom we want to develop a new form collectively, including the Bunte Luft Trio, Nelly Boyd, and Trobar e Cantar. Quatuor Bozzini from Canada as well as the improvisation collective META from Darmstadt and Cologne will also take part.

Bunte Luft Trio

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

Bunte Luft Trio is an improvisation group from Hamburg that focuses on the sonic interactions of Đàn Bầu, baritone saxophone and modular synthesizer. All three instruments are rooted in completely different genres. The musicians use this peculiarity as a springboard to create their characteristic sound. Tam Thi Pham (VN), Jana De Troyer (BE) and Jan Wegmann (DE) bring their own artistic backgrounds to the table, moving through different atmospheres that let the audience travel through interplanetary deserts and microscopic forests.

META

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

META is a sound and light art collective based in Darmstadt and Cologne, known for their immersive ambient, drone and free folk improvisations, that explore themes of fragility, trauma, the unconsciousness and trance. They have played since 2021 in changing constellations and showed their installations and performances among other places at Casino Luxembourg, Experimance Festival and during their residency at Frise Künstler*innenhaus Hamburg. The current lineup includes light artist Karen Fritz, multimedia artist Katharina Hamp and the sound designer and field recordist Dirk Dullmaier.

Quatuor Bozzini

Clemens Merkel violin
Alissa Cheung violin
Stéphanie Bozzini viola
Isabelle Bozzini violoncello

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

Founded in 1999, Quatuor Bozzini from Montréal/Canada is characterized by a radically contemporary spirit and a great willingness to take risks. With more than 400 commissioned works and 500 world premieres, it has built an extremely diverse and extensive repertoire. It also regularly organizes workshops for young composers and performs the resulting new works.

In addition to the opening Quatuor Bozzini will also play concerts on Friday and Saturday featuring works by Cassandra Miller and Sarah Davachi, among others.

mvonderaue

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 10pm

When she’s not organizing cultural events herself, mvonderaue’s music selection tends to be more melodic than scratchy, with a hint of flickering somewhere between down-tempo and mid-tempo.

Sarah Davachi
Composer in Residence 2026

Wednesday, 14 January, 2026, 6pm and 7:30pm

The second day begins with a lecture by Sarah Davachi, talking about her work. The composer and performer, born in Canada in 1987, is concerned with the close intricacies of timbral and temporal space, utilizing extended durations and considered harmonic structures that emphasize gradual variations in texture, overtone complexity, psychoacoustic phenomena, and tuning and intonation. Her music is also informed by early music concepts of form and harmony, as well as experimental production practices of the studio environment. Davachi’s sound is an intimate and patient experience that lessens perceptions of the familiar and the distant.

Her compositions span solo as well as chamber music, incorporating a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation.

Following her lecture, Davachi will play a solo concert on electric organ.

Morton Feldman: For John Cage (1982)

Wednesday, 14 January, 2026, 9pm

In the night concert, we are looking back on one of the most important composers of the 20th century, Morton Feldman (USA), who would turn 100 on 12 January 2026. From his late work we are presenting For John Cage (1982) for violin and piano, performed by Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea from London. Feldman himself described the 80 minute work ironically: “It’s a little piece for violin and piano but it doesn’t quit.”

It exists as a plateau of existential sound, pianissimo with almost entirely still gestures throughout. Darragh Morgan uses a baroque bow for his praised interpretation, enabling him to produce an especially soft sound.

Trobar e Cantar

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

The Hamburg ensemble Trobar e Cantar strives to bring the rich music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in all its facets, to contemporary audiences. From Gregorian monodies to the complex polyphonic music of the Renaissance, the musicians have built up a rich repertoire with their voices and historical instruments. In doing so, the ensemble continually ventures into new territory and formats. Trobar e Cantar collaborates with scientists, actors, and cabaret artists to create appealing moderated concerts and regularly commissions new compositions for its special instruments. In this way, Trobar e Cantar succeeds in building a bridge between musical fragments, some of which are over a thousand years old, and the 21st century.

Performers for klubkatarakt include: Marcia Lemke-Kern – soprano, Yu-Ching Chao – recorders, and Milena Hoge – harp.

Nelly Boyd

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

The composers’ collective Nelly Boyd emerged 2004 from the need to break up formal academic structures, to explore different influences from classical composition, electro-acoustic music, rock, improvisation etc. and to search for its own sound – all of this in a non-hierarchical framework.

TonArt Trio

Tuesday, 13 January, 2026, 8pm

The three musicians Daria-Karmina Iossifova, Georgia Ch. Hoppe and Nicola Kruse from the TonArt Ensemble have been playing together for many years, always open to new forms of improvisation. Their diverse musical experiences in all kinds of genres lead to exciting musical interactions.

Afrorack

Thursday, 15 January, 2026, 6pm and 9:30pm

Ugandan musician Afrorack (aka Brian Bamanya) is a multidisciplinary artist, engineer, and musician who has pioneered Africa’s first DIY modular synthesizer and constructed it using locally sourced components. In his music, Afrorack merges polyrhythmic structures inherent in African music with elements of acid, techno, and ambient sounds. His innovative work has inspired a new generation of musicians and technologists, bridging the gap between traditional African music and contemporary electronic soundscapes.

At 6pm Brian Bamanya will give a lecture about his work and music.

Alexander Schubert & Decoder Ensemble: Eternal Dawn

Thursday, 15 January, 2026, 7:30pm

The German premiere of Eternal Dawn by Hamburg composer Alexander Schubert takes place as part of the festival and opens the third day.

The work is a full-length music theatre project on the subject of transhumanism, in collaboration with Decoder Ensemble and a wide interdisciplinary artistic and scientific team.

In a futuristic setting, performers act as a group of individual cyborgs with the help of technical body extensions, biomodifications and sensors. These actions and interactions determine both the theatrical content of the piece and the musical form of the work.

The project aims to make the discourse on transhumanism tangible and depict its ambiguity. The technological starting point opens up questions about humanity, control, agency, self and body images.

Further performances are taking place on Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm.

Ensemble 404

Karolína Mydlářová recorder
Sabrina Uccello clarinet
Jeanne Lavalle bassoon
Vitalia Agrba percussion
Zeynep Duru Sertoğlu viola
Ricardo Silva doublebass
Oscar Corpo artistic direction

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 9pm

Founded in Hamburg in 2024, Ensemble 404 takes its name from the “Not Found” error, reflecting its spirit of experimentation and connection to technology. With versatile instrumentation and an international lineup, the ensemble explores contemporary music, improvisation, and the limits of both musicians and their instruments — creating vivid, unpredictable musical experiences.

Max Gausepohl

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 9pm

“Entitäten” is an abstract-musical auditory exploration. The quadraphonic composition is improvised live. For this purpose Max Gausepohl is using reprogrammed gaming joysticks as instruments. The various sounds are generated using a variety of synthesis methods and moved through space, creating an ever-evolving, multi-layered soundscape.

Max Gausepohl works as a sound designer and performer. His artistic interest lies in the spatial potential of sound and its sensory experience, which he continually explores in his work.

Sarah Davachi: Long Gradus

Friday, 16 January, 2026, 7:30pm

Sarah Davachi’s Long Gradus is a long-form composition in four movements that was developed as an iteration of an ongoing preoccupation with chordal suspension and cadential structure. In this context, horizontal shifts in pitch material and texture occur on a very gradual scale, allowing the listener’s perceptions to settle on the spatial experience of harmony.

A “gradus” is a sort of handbook that is meant to aid in learning a difficult practice; in this case, Long Gradus is designed to considerably slow the cognitive movements of both listener and player, and to focus their attention on the relationships between moments.

This version was written for the Canadian Quatuor Bozzini.

Quatuor Bozzini

Clemens Merkel violin
Alissa Cheung violin
Stéphanie Bozzini viola
Isabelle Bozzini violoncello

Friday, 16 January, 2026, 7:30pm

Founded in 1999, Quatuor Bozzini from Montréal/Canada is characterized by a radically contemporary spirit and a great willingness to take risks. With more than 400 commissioned works and 500 world premieres, it has built an extremely diverse and extensive repertoire. It also regularly organizes workshops for young composers and performs the resulting new works.

This version of Sarah Davachis Long Gradus was written specifically for Quatuor Bozzini. The quartet played the premiere of the third part of the composition as part of klubkatarakt¹⁸. Now the Bozzinis will return to Hamburg to perform the complete cycle.

Groupshow

Friday, 16 January, 2026, 9:30pm

Groupshow sessions – be it rehearsal, concert, or recording – are always improvised. The interplay of the various sound sources, converging from the directions of “electronics”, “percussion”, and “guitar”, does not follow the Krautrock wave logic of crescendo and morendo. The trio, consisting of Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler, has established a method of transparent density in which links and breaks are not concealed but remain audible. The music works through attraction and repulsion, with a loosely organized structure that always leaves enough room for the next intervention.

The principle here, repeated even in the smallest units, is that of duration. Groupshow think of their music in terms of an installation: no starting point, no dramaturgy, and ideally no end. Concerts take place in the centre of the room surrounded by the audience, who only enter the space once the musical interaction is already underway.

Sutsche

Sunday, 18 January, 2026, 1pm

Sutsche, the Hamburg-based DJ duo consisting of Djs akaak and Martin Moritz, has been redefining electronic music since 2008 with their signature style. Their unique approach involves playing techno and house vinyls at 33 rpm instead of 45 rpm, transforming the fast-paced rhythms into slow, hypnotic grooves. This unorthodox method emphasizes subtle textures in the music, turning the drop into a smooth, gliding moment. Their sets offer a profound, extended dance experience, creating a deeper, meditative connection with the crowd.

Long Night

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 8pm – open end…

The Long Night did not grow out of the festival alone, but from a concert form developed by the composers’ collective katarakt back in the 1990s. The concept is simple, but holds new surprises every year, as the festival primarily presents first and world premieres by the local scene as well as international guests, alternating with experimental short films and audiovisual performances.

General Magic ∞ Tina Frank

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 10:15pm

Special guests for the Long Night are General Magic ∞ Tina Frank. A live performance by the Austrian trio is an experimental exploration into the convergence of audio and visual domains. General Magic’s self-built interfaces, facilitating surreal and playful interactions with their generated sounds, are interconnected with Frank’s video synthesizers. The show is poised to manifest as an extraordinary fusion where experimental electronic music and visuals interact, merge and degenerate into collages of scratchy and illuminating layers of shapes and sounds.

Juha T. Koskinen : NARITAI, ich möchte Zeuge sein. (2025)

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 8pm

The heart of this solo piece is a fragment from the Japanese Tendai Buddhist ritual chant Shōmyō. The name is Godaigan, which means “Five Great Vows.” It begins with the sentence: “There are infinitely many sentient beings, and I vow to save them all.”

Juha Koskinen’s composition is an inner struggle in the face of a seemigly unsolvable problem: What should we do in the face of so much violence and destruction in our world today? Is complete impartiality a right solution?
It is Frauke Aulbert’s voice, with its various singing techniques, and her focused presence as a performer that brings together all the different elements of my score.

Congee Rats

Saturday, 17 January, 2026, 11:15pm

Congee Rats is the solo project of Dong Zhou, where electronic music serves as the core of cross-genre experiments, spanning influences from punk to world music. The songs are deeply reflective, often delving into pressing societal issues, particularly the experiences and struggles of marginalized communities.

TWISK

Sunday, 18 January, 2026, 0:20am

TWISK is a band: Jonas + Lennart + Luka + drums + guitar + guitar + bass + vocals + attitude. The personal is political.

And then there’s this old skit: An elephant is led into a darkened exhibition room. Some visitors feel the animal in the dark, and depending on where they touch it, they believe the elephant is a water hose, a fan, a stele, or a throne. They argue and cling to their opinions. Such people only recognize one facet of a thing. No kidding! In any case, the sensual ear is like the palm of the hand. The palm of the hand does not have the means to comprehend the whole animal.

As for TWISK, the trio from Hamburg: they present an alternative take on the idea of a “song.” Their music moves between refusal pop in the spirit of Deerhoof and virtuoso minimal rock in the school of Young Marble Giants.