About the festival

From 24 May to 7 June 2023, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Government of St Petersburg, Russia’s largest annual forum of contemporary music will take place: the 10th St Petersburg International New Music Festival (artistic director: composer Mehdi Hosseini), organised by the St Petersburg Centre for Contemporary Music “reMusik.org”.

The two-week festival will present more than 50 different events, with concerts held at the finest music venues of St Petersburg, such as the Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall, the Great Hall of the Philharmonia, the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the Radio House, the Sheremetev Palace and other venues across the city.

The St Petersburg International New Music Festival is a unique event in Russia’s musical culture, without parallel. It covers a wide range of trends in contemporary academic music: experimental, electroacoustic and electronic music, multimedia projects, free improvisation and more. The presentation format is not limited to traditional academic concerts but also includes performances and experimental shows.

The festival will feature concerts by outstanding Russian musicians and ensembles specialising in contemporary academic music, such as Ensemble Répons, the Studio for New Music, the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Vacuum Quartet, the St Petersburg Improvisation Orchestra, the “La Gol” Voice Theatre, the “Gallery of Actual Music” ensemble, Mikhail Krutik (violin), Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky (trumpet), Georgy Mansurov (clarinet), Vladislav Pesin (violin), Yulia Migunova (cello), Nikolai Popov (electronics) and many other festival participants.

The festival’s educational strand includes lectures, presentations, round tables, master classes, reading sessions and meet-the-artist events. The festival will also feature an online educational project, the “reMusik.org Composition Courses” (curator: composer Alexander Khubeev), held this year for the fifth time. In this creative laboratory, young composers from all over the world selected by a jury will have the opportunity to work with renowned invited Russian performers and composers of international standing. Lectures and individual lessons with students will be given by acknowledged masters of the art of composition.

This year will also see the second edition of the Improvised Music Laboratory (curator: pianist and conductor Dmitry Shubin). This year the laboratory focuses on the theme of “Space” and includes lectures, practical workshops and master classes. The results of the laboratory’s work will be presented at the participants’ final concert at the M. K. Anikushin Studio Museum.

As is now traditional, the festival programme will include a variety of discussions on the following topics: “New Music in Digital Format in the Post-Pandemic Reality”, “New Music as a Form of Communication”, “New Music and the Challenges of Our Time”, as well as a round table “New Music and Artificial Intelligence: Composer vs Machine”. Prominent cultural figures, composers, music critics and all interested listeners will be invited to take part in the discussions.

The programme of this anniversary festival will include world and Russian premieres of works written by composers in the 21st century.