SONIC MATTER Festival

Every year during the winter months, the SONIC MATTER Festival invites you to explore experimental music at various locations in Zurich. In collaboration with changing guest curators or guest festivals, we bring artists from Switzerland and the international community together for concerts, sound parcours, performances, exhibitions, lounges, club nights, and discussions. Since 2023, we invite an annual Artist in Residence to shape the festival with us.

The next SONIC MATTER Festival will run from 4 to 7 March 2027. The line-up will be published in January 2027.

Don't want to miss any updates on our future festivals or our around the year activities like SONIC MATTER_radio or the soundguide? Then we look forward to adding you to our newsletter mailing list. Please fill out the registration form here.

Find visual impressions of past festival editions on this site.

Discover artists and programme details in our archive.

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2026

Turbulent times bring unpredictable changes. They make our inner compass dizzy, but they also open up new horizons. Under the theme of «drift», we surfed the waves of time with the fifth edition of the SONIC MATTER Festival for Experimental Music from 26 February to 1 March 2026. With two musical marathons, we let ourselves be washed away and float in unexpected directions. Keeping our ears to the wind, we followed musical traditions on their journey around the world and listened to how they transform. Along the way, we met artist-in-residence Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, who explores developments in Vietnamese music and incorporates them into her own artistic language. Guest curator Adham Hafez brought the voice of a legend of Arabic music to the Rote Fabrik in a new guise. In the Label Lounge, where releases from Zurich and around the world can be heard, he presented us with a groundbreaking archive of Syrian music. Hafez also left his mark on the borderline club culture programme, which brought us to Umbo for the first time, where DJs from Zurich and Cairo took turns at the turntables. At the Kasernenareal, we heared works by women* composers spanning several centuries, entered the confusing worlds of an ensemble in group therapy, and let the music literally oscillate in and out.

In the line-up among other: Fidan Aghayeva-Edler, Asia Ahmetjanova, Romane Bouffioux, Noémi Büchi, Dimitri de Perrot, Magda Drozd, Ensemble Vortex, Violeta García, Anne Gillot, Rama Gottfried, Mareike Hein, Ink!, IOKOI, Donia L Jelly, Lua Jungck, Hannah Kendall, Kollektiv International Totem, Love & Revenge, Hora Lunga, Benoît Moreau, Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, -ous, OSZILOT, Julia Schwartz, Syrian Cassette Archives, Rai Tateishi, The Six Tones, Daniel Zea, ZULI, …

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2025

Throwaway mentality is not a concept for eternity. This realisation has now taken hold. The issue of better dealing with yesterday's legacy is fuelling the imagination. How to save forgotten beauty over time? Where to put unwanted remnants? What to do with traditions and thought patterns? Retro chic, recycling economy, preservation, and unlearning are just some of the answers. There is a wealth of various ideas. The SONIC MATTER Festival Zurich 2025 explored them under the motto of «REMAKE». We welceomed the ensembles Eklekto, We Spoke, and Hyper Duo from Western Switzerland, the company [in]operabilities with music theatre for all the senses, our artist-in-residence Hardi Kurda, guest curator Niga Salam, and many more. As a nomadic festival, we moved from the Kasernenareal to the Gessnerallee and on to the ZHdK for our fourth edition. In teaming up with borderline club culture, we were also guesting at Kauz for the first time.

–––––––––––– Gessnerallee –––––––––––– Kunstraum Walcheturm –––––––––––– Kauz Club –––––––––––– Restaurant Zeughaushof –––––––––––– Toni-Areal ––––––––––––

Artists

Alexandre Babel, Boshoco, Brvna, Noémi Büchi, Martina Buzzi, Mio Chareteau, Jessie Cox, Eklekto, El Kontessa, Morton Feldman, Gilles Grimaître, Salômé Guillemin-Poeuf, Juliana Hodkinson, Eloain Lovis Hübner, Hyper Duo, [in]operabilities, Raz Kamaran, Simone Keller, Axel Kolb, Hardi Kurda, Fernando Manassero, Isandro Ojeda-García, Celeste Oram, Sarina Panahideh, Niga Salam, Monika Stalder, Uhuruku, Vokalensemble Zürich, Anna-Louise Walton & We Spoke.

Artist in Residence Hardi Kurda

Guest Curator Niga Salam

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2023

People fleeing poverty and war, a pandemic, climate change: the crises of our time are omnipresent. Their effects are felt around the globe and even impact on the most personal aspects of our lives. We often feel at a loss when faced with the challenges they put to us; however, this same feeling also fuels our urge to meet them. In 2023 th SONIC MATTER Festival for Experimental Music took a closer look at coping strategies: how can the interrelatedness of our world provide an opportunity for encountering what and who we consider Other? Can rituals help us change our way of thinking? Which new perspectives are revealed to us when we change our way of seeing? For the third edition of the festival, we considered these questions with the help of that year’s guest festival, Irtijal Beirut, and artists from West Asia, Africa, and Europe. Under the auspices of the edition’s motto LEAP, we invited audiences to propel themselves into the unknown – with strength, courage, and curiosity for the future.

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2022

To begin, to climb, to grow, to resist – RISE, the overarching theme of the 2022 edition of SONIC MATTER Festival for Experimental Music, lend itself to diverse interpretations. From 1–4 December 2022 twenty events took audiences on journeys into personal and shared experiences of belonging, identity, transgressions, and resistance. Listening always marked the point of departure. Traditions in the form of music, sound, and noises have a different character than the documents of classical historiography: they are more fleeting but also more immediate; they are harder to document but also less constrained by language and space. The second edition of the SONIC MATTER Festival followed these traces through concerts, performances, installations, conversations, a club night, and a listening lounge. One emphasis was on contributions from sub-Saharan Africa, among others by artists involved in our 2022 partner festival Nyege Nyege, Uganda.

We thank all audiences and artists for taking part in SONIC MATTER Festival 2022!

That was
SONIC MATTER
Festival 2021

What does Zurich sound like under ground? Can music-making help us learn to live in a damaged ecosystem? Do I hear differently when a concert is played for me only? From December 2 to 5, 2021, the Zurich festival SONIC MATTER invited its guests to explore these and other questions revolving around experimental music. In the backround always resonated the festival theme 2021 «TURN», which traces changes on a large and small scale. With concerts, performances, exhibitions, lounges, club events and talks, SONIC MATTER brought artists from Switzerland and abroad at a varied range of venues in the city and canton of Zurich together. One emphasis was on contributions from artists involved in our 2021 partner festival Novas Frequências, Rio de Janeiro.