The festival, spanning venues like Theatro Circo, gnration, and Capela Imaculada Conceição, will showcase “a new and innovative performance” featuring Actress (Darren J Cunningham) and Suzanne Ciani. Both artists, who have previously performed solo at the festival, will present “Concrète Waves,” a work commissioned by the Spanish festival Sónar and the British art center Barbican.
Composer and sound designer Marta de Pascalis, along with visual artist Marco Ciceri, will present the new album “Tell me the Sun.” London-based experimental artist aya (Aya Sinclair) will appear at Semibreve to introduce her second album, “hexed!,” while Iranian-born composer, pianist, and bassist Ava Rasti will perform “The River,” her latest album, accompanied by a string quartet. This performance is commissioned by Semibreve under the Re-Imagine Europe program.
The British project emptyset (James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas) returns to Braga to showcase the album “Dissever,” released in May, which premiered live at the Tate Modern museum in London, as part of the “Electric Dreams” exhibition, “an extensive retrospective of the global history of art and technology.”
Ukrainian composer Oleh Shpudeiko, known as Heinali, will perform at Semibreve with singer Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, “who practices authentic Ukrainian vocal traditions.”
Together, they will present the project “???????????” (Hildegard, in Ukrainian), “a unique reinvention of the music of Hildegard von Bingen,” combining vocal approaches inspired by authentic traditional Ukrainian singing with modular synthesis techniques drawing from the polyphony and monody of the High Middle Ages.
The program also includes musician Rafael Toral, who will introduce the work “Travelling Light,” which premiered at the Venice International Music Festival in March and was developed alongside the 2024 album “Spectral Evolution.”
The performance of “Travelling Light,” in which Rafael Toral continues his exploration of jazz harmonies through the expressive possibilities of guitar in dialogue with acoustic soloists, features musicians Yaw Tembe (flugelhorn), Pedro Alves Sousa (tenor saxophone), Bruno Parrinha (clarinet), and Clara Saleiro (flute).
The 15th edition of the festival marks the return of the EDIGMA Semibreve Award, which “celebrates and promotes the creation of works that explore interactivity, sound, and image through the use of digital technologies,” with the winner’s work exhibited at the festival.
The complete Semibreve program is available on the festival’s official website at www.festivalsemibreve.com.
