The Dara String Festival brings together interdisciplinary string artists from around the world. This year, Clara Levy, Judith Hamann, Biliana Voutchkova, Manja Ristić, Atsuko Hatano, Youmna Saba and Vinicius Cajado will present a diverse spectrum of innovative, cross-genre music.
The unconventional exchange of experience and culture between the seven featured musicians creates fruitful synergies and surprising listening experiences. In conjunction with this year’s focus on electronics, the artists develop unique setups that are at the cutting edge of current developments.
Solo and various ensembles play music ranging from early contemporary to experimental and freely improvised, including new own compositions, world premieres by Sarah Hennies, Zeynep Toraman and Voutchkova/Levy, pieces by Kaija Saariaho and Erika Vega, closing with a special Drone for Phill celebrating the legacy and birthday of Phill Niblock.
This year the festival’s artistic director and curator Biliana Voutchkova brings together seven artists from Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the most diverse festival edition to date. There will also be an additional family concert at Zwingli on Saturday afternoon at 15 CET.
Since its conception in 2019 the festival has aimed to spread its tentacles beyond Berlin and the two festival days. The international and local artists have had various DARA Strings guest appearances. In 2021, two guest editions were presented in Cologne and Wuppertal, and in 2022 a cooperation with Swedish artists and the Swedish Embassy took place with the project Kontrapunkt which was previously performed in Stockholm.
In 2023, two of our American festival guests, Joanna Mattrey and Miya Masaoka, presented an intertwined duo performance with Johannes Haase and Biliana Voutchkova at The Art of the Duo in Bremen – a collaboration with Johannes Haase’s concert series. Finally, this year DARA Strings appeared at the Sound Disobedience Festival in Ljubljana, and are just at the threshold of their USA debut, with concerts in Chicago in collaboration with the Instigation Festival, and at the prestigious Roulette Intermedium in New York City.
