The jubilee 20th edition of the Sacrum Profanum festival is enriched by a unique series. From August to December, we will invite you to four Interactions, i.e. concerts at the intersection of classical, alternative and experimental music. They will be accompanied by discussions in which everyone can participate. Let's meet in Kraków!

Sacrum Profanum, a gathering point for classical and alternative music, overcomes the time barriers of the festival as such and moves to different spaces in Kraków – to commune. Because the task of culture is to connect, to create a community of values and ideas. Contemporary culture says a lot about ourselves and the reality around us, and the musical one is addressed particularly to emotions. Music uncovers new dimensions of sensitivity and suggests leads which can lead us down our own path. We believe that this journey broadens horizons, and that only curiosity and open-mindedness separate us from delight.

The Sacrum Profanum: Interactions series was created at the intersection of the ideas of the festival team and the Kraków new music community, which we have consistently supported for years. Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, a contemporary music ensemble awarded this season by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, plays a key role in this concept. We have also invited to Interactions the Contemporary Music Ensemble Synaesthesis from Vilnius, which received the same award the year before. We are building this series in partnership with young and thriving bands to create a space for collaboration, development and the presentation of an authorial vision of new music, shimmering with many colours. Freely travelling through the terrain of 20th century classics, we break away from traditional music education to explore electronic and ambient music, confront text, image and search for our own identity in the chaotic present.

What can we expect? Eclecticism, synesthesia and cooperativism. Blurring the boundaries between alternative and classics (Shlomowitz, Mantovani) at the intersection with free improvisation (Glojnarić). Expressive postmodernists (Mykietyn, Saunders) alongside sonically sublime spectralists (Haas, Murail). Melancholic Lithuanian minimalism in a programme inspired by walks through a city deserted by lockdown. Premier compositions by the doyen of the Polish avant-garde, Zygmunt Krauze, and Paweł Malinowski, who creatively refers to this trend. And, in the last Interaction, we will hear Agata Zubel’s award-winning and eccentric composition Not I, performed by the composer herself!

The Sacrum Profanum: Interactions series are pretexts for four encounters around music. We have prepared them following on from last year’s Post Scriptum series, but also the Spółdzielnia Muzyczna’s Ars Moderna series. Together we ensure the regular presence of contemporary repertoire at concerts in Kraków. The programme is not only cross-sectional, but also full of musical celebrities: showcasing the most important voices in contemporary music. We have planned a shared time with compositions by women (Saunders, Zubel, Glojnarić, Martinaitytė, Bauckholt) and men (Blecharz, Shlomowitz, Mykietyn, Digimas, Cage) preceded by talks with people of culture. And after the concerts, together with the musicians, we look forward to Interactions!

Martyna Zakrzewska (Spółdzielnia Muzyczna)

Krzysztof Pietraszewski (Sacrum Profanum)