The InnerSound International New Arts Festival

For the second year running, the InnerSound International New Arts Festival grabbed the attention of Bucharests cultural life with the effervescence of the international contemporary artistic stage.

România Internațional, 29.09.2013, 12:20

For the second year running, the InnerSound International New Arts Festival grabbed the attention of Bucharest’s cultural life with the effervescence of the international contemporary artistic stage. In late August, the most talented young Romanian composers, instrumentalists, directors, photographers and visual artists offered modern art lovers a string of events, which are impossible to forget. In the following minutes we’ll be spinning the yarn of all that. The director of the festival, composer Sabina Ulubeanu tells us how the festival came into being.

Sabina Ulubeanu: “The InnerSound idea stemmed from my close work with composer Diana Rotaru, who was on a creative scholarship in Switzerland, in April 2011. She came up with the idea that we had to do something extra for Bucharest’s cultural life, so much so that around us, we had to bring youngsters from all arts, who could be happy they could create and share what they were doing. We thought about starting up a contemporary music festival, where music would be at the core of a performance lasting a couple of days and having on offer photography, film, multimedia shows, syncretic performances, in other words we had music revolving around image and image revolving around music. This mix has brought a lot of success to us so far”.

InnerSound is a festival which has a message to convey to the world. The message, says Sabina Ulubeanu, lies at the core of the festival’s name as well.

Sabina Ulubeanu: “The sound of that generation is very strong, it is a conspicuous yet very refined sound. We thought the inner world of the young artists from Romania deserved to be known and heard: InnerSound, the inner sound was perhaps the title that best worked for us. “

The first edition of InnerSound was held in 2012.It lasted three days and enjoyed the participation of guests from Canada, Ireland and Switzerland. It was venued by the Romanian Peasant Museum and the National Music University. The inaugural edition saw the outline of the festival’s noteworthy events: the concert series entitled “Encounters in time and space”, which offered music from all ages, from medieval to contemporary music, as well as a silent movie evening, with live music. That was a rather new concept in Romania, as Sabina Ulubeanu told us:

Sabina Ulubeanu: ” We asked young directors to make short- reels as well as silent movies. At the same time, we asked young composers to write music for an ensemble. The first such ensemble was made of flute, bassoon, violin and cello. The conductor was Gabriel Bebeselea, the only conductor who took responsibility for that very difficult part, that of conducting an ensemble while the film is screened in the background. It’s no easy job, but the film evening was so successful, the Romanian Peasant Museum was packed with people, they were sitting in the grass as well as on the stairs, which prompted us to carry on with the festival the following year. During the last concert, people were giving standing ovations for a contemporary music concert of composer Henri Vega jointly with the vocalist Anat Spiegel. It was a contemporary music concert which compelled 3-4 encores, that was fascinating for the audience and for us as well, something like that hadn’t happened to us before “.

In 2013, the festival extended from 3 to 6 days and had a greater number of venues for its events. The opening concert was held on the premises at the Lowendal Foundation, which also hosted a photo exhibition. The second edition ran under the heading” Mysterium”. Why Mysterium? Here is Sabina Ulubeanu again.

Sabina Ulubeanu: ”We believe that’s what us, artists, do. We try to unravel the deep, mysterious meanings inside everyone, to bring the joy of introspection as well as the joy of self-discovery and self-recovery.”

And also bringing sheer joy was the laser show from the Romanian Peasant Museum’s courtyard, as well as the performance put up by the Romanian artists who were invited at the festival, as well as the experiential composition seminar given by composer Irinel Anghel, which enjoyed a tremendous success with the audience and came out as a surprise even for the organizers.

Sabina Ulubeanu: “We had the surprise to discover many participants from other arts. There were fine artists who wanted to express themselves through music, as well as people who had noting to do with music whatsoever. Usually you don’t see many unknown faces at specialized symposia and workshops. At that symposium, on the very day Roger Waters was giving a concert in Bucharest, there were fifty people in the room, which is a great number of people for a fringe festival like ours. We have to admit that contemporary arts represent a niche phenomenon.”

The InnerSound festival is unique in the Romanian cultural landscape. Even if it is sometimes held in between other special events, such as Roger Water’s first concert in Bucharest and the George Enescu Festival, Sabina Ulubeanu tells us InnerSound has successfully provided the transition from one event to the other.

Sabina Ulubeanu: “We began before Roger Waters, with chamber music concerts and a photo exhibition, and after Roger Water’s concert ended, there were three very eventful evenings. Those three evenings provided a very interesting link between those who wanted to go to Roger Water’s concert and the music fans who go to the Enescu Festival on a regular basis, as those evenings provided a fine blend of music of all times and I somehow think we found ourselves a fine place in Romanian music. There’s no such festival as the InnerSound. There is also the Sonoro festival, centered on chamber music. There is the Enescu festival, where the world’s greatest orchestras are brought over, and where contemporary music is being played extensively, yet not necessarily the youth music. And there’s InnerSound, where artists from all fields try to get together around that idea, whereby art means joint work and an exchange of ideas and feelings.”

For the organizers of the festival, which basically has been self-founded, it is very important that fine artists, filmmakers and photographers are happy to merge with the new musical phenomenon.

That provided the driving force of the festival’s forthcoming editions. And in 2014, in late August, you’re invited to InnerSound as well.