Portugal

A couple of months ago, when writing about this year’s World New Music Days in Portugal, i mentioned a talk by Miso Music co-founder Miguel Azguime, given during a colloquium exploring the festival’s theme Thirst for Change. i was deeply struck by the force of Azguime’s words, which i found …

Alongside chamber and electroacoustic music, the 2025 World New Music Days included a diverse range of ensemble and orchestral works.

The 2025 World New Music Days included a healthy amount of electronic and electroacoustic music. Interestingly, most of the best of them were individual submissions, not part of any country’s official selection. i’m not entirely sure what that signifies, but it’s worth noting. All of these works were performed in …

The World New Music Days features a wide variety of instrumental combinations, but the majority of music performed at this year’s festival were chamber works. Some of these fell within a trio of “extraordinário” concerts, each focused on a solo instrument, clarinet, cello and saxophone.

Contemporary music festivals often feel the need to impose a theme on the proceedings, but in the case of this year’s World New Music Days, hosted in Portugal, it was less a theme than a rallying cry. “Thirst for Change” was the phrase hanging over the festival, though as with …

i wrote before about the way the World New Music Days acts like a hadron collider, smashing together diverse stylistic and aesthetic ideas from around the world. One of the startling truths to emerge from this violent eclecticism is that, what makes bad music bad, wherever it comes from in …