CRIPPLED SYMMETRIES Festival - patterns in contemporary music

Friday, 17. Apr 2026 – Sunday, 19. Apr 2026

at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. respectively

St. Elisabeth & Villa Elisabeth

A project by Ensemble KNM Berlin in cooperation with the Busan International Contemporary Music Festival, the Department of Musicology at Freie Universität Berlin, Frequenz_Festival Kiel, Goethe-Institut Lima, the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera, Kultur Büro Elisabeth, MaerzMusik / Berliner Festspiele, and Studio Acht Taipei.

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CRIPPLED SYMMETRIES by KNM Berlin is an international concert series and festival that brings together composers, performers, and collectives from different cultures.

Inspired by Morton Feldman's late work "Crippled Symmetry," the artists explore repetition, variation, contextual shifts, and re-examination—not so much as abstract concepts, but rather as tools of individual artistic biographies.

Festival program
A total of six concerts over three festival days.

In "Re/Set," Petra Strahovnik processes her experience with long COVID, while Tristan Perich forms pulsating, complex structures from 1-bit sound. Bumki Kim, Eunseon Yu, Gyu Bong Yi, and Seil Oh refer to the shamanic Gut tradition of the port city of Busan, while AnA Maria Rodriguez & Juan Felipe Waller explore the cyclical from the perspective of upcycling.

The RETAMA Women Composers Collective translates indigenous rituals into contemporary contexts, Zesses Seglias explores the gong as a sound body, and Carte blanche is given to the Trio Cube Band with works by Kee Yong Chong, Ying Wang, Deqing Wen, and Chin-Hsien Chun.

Contributors
Ensemble KNM Berlin (DEU) – Cube Band (TWN) – Ensemble 0 (FRA)
Kee Yong Chong (MYS), Chin-Hsien Chung (TWN), Bumki Kim (KOR), Seil Oh (KOR), Tristan Perich (USA), RETAMA – Claudia Sofía Alvarez, Wendolyne Guerra Alvarez, Darlene Neyra Leon & Yemit Ledesma Portilla (PER), AnA Maria Rodriguez (ARG), Zesses Seglias (GRC), Petra Strahovnik (SVN), Juan Felipe Waller (MEX), Ying Wang (CHN/DEU), Deqing Wen (CHE/CHN), Eunseon Yu (KOR), Gyu-Bong Yi (KOR)

Tickets
Day tickets €16 / €12 reduced price in online advance sales plus advance booking fee
3-day festival ticket €36 / €30 reduced price in online advance sales plus advance booking fee. Further information to follow.

Funding
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. With the kind support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
Media partners: Jungle World, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Positionen – Texte zur aktuellen Musik, tipBerlin

Veranstaltungsart

Concert

Festival