How does one find a contemporary sound? The question is a sore one, yet unanswerable. Some combine Kurt Weill and Louis Andriessen in a single programme; others take the stage in polka-dot sci-fi costumes and deliver abstract, dense math rock. The Studio for New Music goes about it the old-fashioned way and turns to the roots. Before this, listeners at the “Oikoumene. 21st Century” festival had already flown around the world, reached the edge of the earth, and heard both a discussion among Japanese composers and the Bashkir kyl-kubyz. But that was only the prelude, not the tale itself. The real conversation began at the very end of the festival. Here the organisers no longer obligingly softened the encounter with an unfamiliar culture; they simply floored the accelerator, gave the performers carte blanche and watched pure communication unfold. And at that moment a dialogue began.