Good news!
klubkatarakt will continue from January 15th – 18th, 2025!
We look forward to seeing you again at Kampnagel with a fantastic program of premieres and first performances.
Save the date!
Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock has passed away on January 8, 2024.
Phill was a mentor and a friend to us – and he was the first composer in residence at klub katarakt festival no. 2 in 2006.
Phill returned for the celebrations of his 80th and 85th birthday, always not only presenting his music but connecting people and musicians. When we asked him for a new piece for three adjacent halls celebrating his 80th birthday in 2014 he wrote THREE PETALS for three ensembles: Trio Scordatura from Amsterdam, ensemble neoN from Oslo and Nelly Boyd from Hamburg. A true Niblock experience!
Our plan was to have Phill here next week for the celebration of his 90th birthday at klub katarakt 19. Sadly this won’t happen.
Phill will be deeply missed.
We love his music, his films, his photos, and above all his beautiful personality.
His spirit will stay in our hearts, always.
If there will be a next klub katarakt it will be with Phills music and films – and many guests.
Jan and Robert
klubkatarakt 2024 is cancelled!
Despite last year’s positive results, we decided to cancel klubkatarakt 2024. The main reason is the almost 25% drop in funding from Hamburg’s Ministry of Culture and Media.
klubkatarakt is of course not an isolated case; other festivals of experimental contemporary music in Hamburg have also received significantly less support (papiripar Festival) or were no longer funded at all (Festival für immaterielle Kunst). In the end, blurred edges festival alone was able to operate with the same amount as before (€ 55,000) and organized over 60 concerts over 17 days in June 2023.
In the case of klubkatarakt, again a lower five-figure amount is now missing, and inflation and rising hotel prices have not even been sufficiently factored in. In addition, the 2023 festival was more exhausting than ever before. That may have to do with the post-pandemic situation on the one hand, but it’s definitely due to the overall precarious situation on the other. At this point in time, we as artistic
co-directors with a very small team feel the need to take a break, rethink and consider how things could continue.
At least, klubkatarakt – together with blurred edges, papiripar and the Festival für Immaterielle Kunst – is in talks with the Ministry of Culture and Media to develop better funding structures for the future.
At the moment, besides ourselves, we see the entire experimental music scene in Hamburg, its freedom and plurality, in danger and we very much hope that something will change here in the short term. Because under the current conditions, we as klubkatarakt are no longer able to do our job at a rate that is well below 50% of the current minimum wage.
We thank all our sponsors, the artists and last but not least our audience for their support. We definitely plan to do the festival again in 2025 and would be happy to welcome our audience then at Kampnagel.
Hamburg, July 6th, 2023
Robert Engelbrecht and Jan Feddersen
Festival for Experimental Music
January 18th – 21st, 2023
Kampnagel, Hamburg
We would like to thank all the composers, musicians, our team, all the supporters and helpers who have made klubkatarakt18 possible.
Special thanks go to Quatuor Bozzini, our ensemble in residence from Montréal. Not only did the quartet organise a workshop with Hamburg musicians in the run-up to the festival to work on the composition Hands & Others by Christian Wolff, but they were also involved in a total of four concerts with ten compositions. C’était un grand plaisir!
We were also very pleased about the visits of the Berlin based ensembles Böseblick and The Paranormal Clarinet Society.
Here is a photo selection by our photographer Jann Wilken:
