DAVID GRANSTRÖM 

Swedish composer and one of the leading figures of Stockholm's experimental drone scene, David Granström (b. 1987), will bring moments of quietude and crushing volume.

Granström’s sound work is characterized by harmonic simplicity, dense yet melodic sound collages and spatial complexity. In 2014, he received a master’s degree in Composition of Electronic Music from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he has worked as a teacher since then. Part of Granström’s practice consists in researching new methods for working algorithmically with real-time sound synthesis.

David Granström released his first studio album on the Stockholm-based label XKatedral, which was founded in 2015 by Kali Malone, now an icon of the international electroacoustic scene, together with Maria W. Horn. At SONDA, David Granström will present recordings from his second album Empty Room, released last year on the Swiss experimental label Hallow Ground. On the album, the artist combines the sound of the electric guitar with synthetic soundscapes recorded in a now defunct iron ore mine, where he was invited for an artist residency. David Granström's Brno performance will be his first in the Czech Republic and his music will be accompanied by a visual show prepared by a collective of artists as part of the Trychtýř project.

TOMOKO SAUVAGE

Japanese composer and multimedia artist Tomoko Sauvage is known for her long-standing experiments with a unique musical instrument consisting of ceramic bowls, water and hydrophones (underwater microphones). Her live performances, which are preceded by a time-consuming preparation including several hours of sound check, are based on the interaction between the sound medium (water) and the environment it is in – its architecture, acoustic properties, temperature or humidity.

Tomoko Sauvage was born and raised in Yokohama, Japan. After studying jazz music and piano in New York, she moved to Paris in 2003, where she currently works and lives. Listening to Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley sparked her interest in Indian music, specifically musical improvisation. The idea to base her musical practice on working with ceramic bowls came about after Sauvage attended a concert by Aanayampatti Ganesan, an Indian musician and jalatarangamplayer. But while Ganesan works with this traditional South Indian instrument, which consists of a set of ceramic vessels filled with water, as percussion, Sauvage's approach is much more complex. By immersing the hydrophones in the water, Sauvage has created a kind of electroaquatic instrument through which she captures the sounds of droplets, swirling of water, as well as hydrophonic feedback. She then augments these sounds with electronic sound effects and ritualized movements and gestures. Tomoko Sauvage's live performances are partly a work of improvisation, as she has to respond swiftly to environment and its changing features (temperature, humidity, evaporation rate of water, etc.) that are beyond her control.

Sauvage has released three solo studio albums: Ombrophilia (and/OAR, 2009), Musique Hydromantique (Shelter Press, 2017), Fischgeist (Bohemian Drips, 2020) and one collaborative album with Francesco Cavallier: Viridescens (Marionette, 2021). She has presented her work at major international festivals and leading gallery institutions, including Roskilde Festival (Denmark), Unsound Festival (Krakow), Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Riga) and Le Centre Pompidou-Metz (Metz).

TADEJ DROLJC

Tadej Droljc is an interdisciplinary artist, active in the field of electronic music, audio-visual performance and other forms of intermedia art. In 2019, he concluded his PhD studies of audio-visual composition at the Centre for Research in New Music at Huddersfield University (UK). In his recent work he has been focusing on what he calls a pluralistic approach to real-time audio-visual composition where various hierarchies between sound and image co-exist inside individual audio-visual pieces.

In recent years, Droljc has received numerous international awards, including the Edigma Semibreve Award (awarded by Semibreve Festival in Braga, Portugal), the MADATAC Most Promising Video Artist Award (awarded by MADATAC - New Media Art & Audio-visual Technologies Festival in Madrid, Spain) or the Lumen Student Award. His work has been featured in festivals all over the world, including the famed Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), L.E.V. Festival (Madrid, Spain) or MUTEC (Montreal, Canada).

Especially for the SONDA festival, Tadej Droljc has prepared a full-dome version of his two audio-visual sets Capillaries Capillaries and Singing Sand, which he will seize the entire surface of the planetarium dome.

TOMÁŠ VTÍPIL

Being a musical chameleon, Tomáš Vtípil’s music is very diverse. He composes film, stage and orchestral music, performs solo, as well as part of larger bands, he is no stranger to acoustic or electronic music. Vtípil's solo work includes the albums Do Not Eat - Throw Away (2010, Dinn), Syntax Error (2013, self-released) and RRRRRR/FAQ, a split LP released together with Pelhřimov's Frequently Asked Questions.

As a producer or co-producer, however, Vtípil has contributed his innovative ideas and approaches to several other musical projects. The musician regularly performs with the underground band DG 307 and composed the music for their album Životy? Nebo bludné kruhy? He is also a member of Urband, an acoustic trio focused on the interpretation of urban folk, blues and jazz. Another of Vtípil's musical projects is the chamber hardcore-chanson duo Che, in which he performs with accordionist and poet Radim Babák. Together with the German rapper Max Bilitza, Tomáš Vtípil recorded the album Neuland, and produced albums of the likes of Marcel Kříž and Tomáš Šenkyřík.

Vtípil's work as a producer of film and stage music is also worth mentioning. He has composed the scores for Pouta, for which he was nominated for the Czech Film Critics and Český lev Award in 2010.

For the SONDA festival, Tomáš Vtípil has prepared an 8-channel sound installation called Bio Piece, which captures the process of preparation and fermentation of the famous Korean dish kimchi.  

JIŘÍ Y SUCHÁNEK

Jiří Y Suchánek is known primarily for his sound and intermedia installations, in which he often involves natural, chaotic and thermodynamic processes to generate and control the sound they produce. He promotes the idea of open, shared authorship, where the environment is a co-author and its selected aspects are captured and translated into sounds using apparatuses that he himself invents, manufactures, and assembles. Through sonification of chaotic processes, he explores the possibilities of experiencing and discovering reality through sound. His music practice is also driven by his interest in non-linearity and organic sound forms that are based on observations of nature and that often defy the rational schemes and precise repetitive patterns produced by machines and software. At the same time, his music is characterized by a great attention to detail, spectral richness and perhaps even ecological balance. In his intermedia work, he routinely combines sound, light, objects, mechanics, electronics and code with carefully chosen spaces.

For his Atom Tone project, a sonification of Mendeleev's periodic table and the spectral lines of atoms, he received the Excellence in Sound Art and Sound Design Award at the prestigious international conference klingt gut! Symposium on Sound in Hamburg, 2018. 

He has created a large number of long-term multimedia installations that were featured at many international festivals and conferences such as CTM, Unsound, ICAD, NEXT, NCCA, STIMUL, ENH, NIME, klingt gut! STEIM, and Institute of Sonology. 

For SONDA festival he has composed a new synesthetic experimental set that combines laser beam with electroacoustic music.

TRYCHTÝŘ

The TRYCHTÝŘ project is a pilot artistic and social experiment that explores the possibilities of creative group collaboration and encourages mutual learning by working together. The project was launched by SVITAVA Association, which addressed the public through an open call and selected a group of 20 artists of different backgrounds who did not know each other.

Through regular meetings in the SVITAVA studios, ideas, intersections and collaborations began to emerge with the aim of diverse artistic interventions at the SONDA Festival. Thus, TRYCHTÝŘ provided the participants with the opportunity to take an active part in creating the festival's content and to present their work in an international context. The form of the interventions is very open - from scenography, full-dome video projections, (not only) musical performances, to installations, interactive objects or unexpected micro and macro immersive situations.

The TRYCHTÝŘ project is a great adventure for all involved, the outcome of which remains unknown until the last moment.

The following artists are participating in the project: Filip Dobrocký, Jana Pavla Francová, Martin Hurych, Jena Jang, Lucie Jestřabíková, Karolína Kohoutková, Krištof Krupa, Katarina Marošiová, Josef Eduard Masáryk, Andrej Nechaj, Jakub Nečas, Kryštof Pátra, Valeriia Riazanova, Seth Rozanoff,  Matúš Stenko, Anna Stepanova, Veronika Šmírová, Zuzana Štefková, Tomáš Urík.