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KLANG Festival
1. jun. - 10. jun.
København
KLANG - Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival
KLANG is Denmark's largest festival for contemporary music. KLANG attracts foreign and Danish ensembles and soloists, collaborates with symphony orchestras and produces opera, and embraces music from after World War 2, but with its focus on the very newest music. That is how it has been since 2009, when the festival Athelas New Music Festival grew out of Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen under the then artistic director Anders Beyer. The festival kept the name Athelas New Music Festival and its close connection with Athelas Sinfonietta up to and including 2012, with Anders Beyer as artistic director throughout. Although the festival changed its name to KLANG and loosened the very close ties to Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, the ensemble is still a significant part of the festival, with a spectacular concert every year. From 2013 to 2015 Rune Glerup and Christian Winther Christensen were the artistic directors of the festival, during which it consolidated itself in its new form, and from 2015 onwards the festival management has consisted of Christian Winther Christensen and Regin Petersen.
During its lifetime the festival has grown. It lasts longer and there are more concerts. Every year the festival now includes a project aimed at children, and there are collaborations between the festival and other institutions in Copenhagen such as Tivoli. As it was from the beginning, KLANG's programming balances the Danish and the international; composers from all over the world are presented alongside the youngest Danish ones, as well as their older colleagues.
”The festival's intention is to gather new music in a distinctive setting so that it gets some attention. We want to be in people's minds and be an event that people look forward to every single year.”
Just as the newest music never stands still, KLANG Festival has moved and developed from its origins in the ambitions and ideas of Athelas Sinfonietta up to the present day. Today the festival stands as an annual celebration of new music in its many guises, and always with its energy and curiosity towards its subject intact. To make a festival that has a place in people's minds and that people look forward to, as the artistic director Christian Winther Christensen says above, there are also specific goals for the festival: ”The festival must unite the Danish scene with the international scene. That is, the Danes should have their eyes opened to what is happening out in the world, and the world should have its eyes opened to what is happening in Denmark. We would like to be a platform that makes it possible to generate larger projects than one would otherwise be able to make. Of course this is to be realised through large collaborative projects with both Danish and international players.”
The balance between the international and the local is also challenged in a fruitful way with specifically Nordic projects and collaborations with foreign festivals, and finally KLANG also focuses on presenting the music of living composers to children and young people. Christian Winther Christensen mentions that one of the criteria for KLANG's success is a large audience, and working to meet audiences at a young age helps to secure that in the long term. Among the criteria for success, besides of course the artistic quality of the individual concerts, is also that works and events at the festival attract attention, prompt discussion and push boundaries for the audience.
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