The Wire: A month of Contemporary Music
The breadth and depth of contemporary music in Berlin, fuelled inn part by a thriving expat community, is hardly a secret. Locals are surrounded by all stripes of sonic experimentation, whether electronic excursions, adventurous chamber ensembles, or freely improvised music with many stops in between. In 2017, Initiative Neue Music Berlin – an invaluable advocacy organisation run by composers, musicians, academics and administrators – launched A Month of Contemporary Music, a concentrated survey to provide a kind of critical mass to adventurous musical activity in the city. The calendar of events each September isn’t really different from any other month in Berlin, but by curating a slate of performances, installations and discussions, with events in hallowed concert halls and gritty underground spaces, with a deliberately expansive aesthetic framework, the project does a nice job of highlighting the sheer variety and quality of contemporary music in the city. [...]
By Peter Margasak
