NEXT 2025 – Day 1: The Acousmonium

The opening of the NEXT 2025 festival will be spectacular – 60 speakers will fill the Grand Hall of Slovak Radio. Drew McDowall, Félicia Atkinson, Michaela Turcerová, BJ Nilsen, and others will perform exceptional concerts on the prestigious Acousmonium sound system.

The placement of sound in the space – in front of, beside, and behind the audience – offers a deep, immersive experience. Acousmonium was developed by the legendary Paris studio Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), which operates within the INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel) and is one of the world’s most important centers for research and creation in the field of electronic music.

Line-up:

• Drew McDowall – An artist who refuses to conform and explores the spaces between reality and transcendence in his music. His meditations in sound combine modular landscapes with cut-up sampling and break down sound to its essence. The result is ambient preludes full of dread, melancholy, and ethereal beauty.
• Félicia Atkinson – She draws inspiration from the work of painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Atkinson evokes and celebrates the mystery of art in a poetic and holistic way. By combining fragmentary voices, piano fragments, electronic textures and patterns, as well as field recordings, Atkinson creates music that is a unique way of approaching the world.
• Michaela Turcerová – A musician and composer from Banská Bystrica, currently living in Copenhagen. She plays the alto/soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and composes in the field of partially open scores, (un)conventional notation, conceptual ideas, and minimalism. She often focuses on physical space as part of the musical experience in her work.
• BJ Nilsen – Swedish sound artist and composer living in Amsterdam. His work focuses on the intersection of field recordings, sound, space, and perception. Through subtle electronic manipulations and precise editing, he transforms environmental recordings into layered, immersive soundscapes that blur the line between reality and imagination.