TonLagen Festival

During the last 22 years, the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music has gained international renown as a high-quality festival of modern music. Hosted by the European Center for the Arts in Hellerau every autumn, the festival has traditionally concentrated on "serious" music.
In 2009 its new artistic director Dieter Jaenicke began to steer the festival in a different direction. In order to appeal to larger audiences, this year's festival supplemented contemporary music with related genres, such as dance, performance art, film, theatre and literature. The programme also included electronic music experiments, sound collages, sound installations and avant-garde rock and pop music concerts by groups like The Knife and Coco Rosie. The past focus on European music expanded to include contemporary pieces from India, China, Latin America and Africa.
With this new direction, the festival hopes to attract new audiences in the long term, but also to improve the conditions for entering large-scale cooperative ventures with other festivals of contemporary music in Europe.

Artists: Saâdane Afifi (FR), Theo Bleckmann, Dresdner Sinfoniker, Ellery Eskelin (USA), Ensemble Ascolta, Ensemble Courage, ensemble of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, Fabrizio Cassol, Coco Rosie, Ex Novo Ensemble (I), Gary Versace (USA), Heiner Goebbels, John Hollenbeck (USA), Hotel Pro Forma (DK), Klangforum Wien (ÖS), musikFabrik, The Knife (SE), Tony Malaby (USA), Xavier Le Roy (F)

Venue and schedule:
Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden 1- 18 October 2009