Warsaw Autumn

Little Warsaw Autumn is getting older! Does it mean it is getting more serious? Don’t worry—not at all. The Festival is not losing sight of what is most important in music: freedom, multiple experiences, spontaneous participation, and boundless creativity. But the nature of art does not preclude us from addressing important and responsible issues such as democratic voting.

We stay away from politics, and tackle those important issues in the form of a musical field game and play. In Królikarnia’s Sculpture Park, we shall participate in an outdoor performance titled VOICES. The instant association with singing is correct but only in part: this performance is about using one’s voice in the sense of voting for… a musical party. Participants will chose between manifestos of different parties: the Energetics, All-Players, Literals, Complicates, and Recyclists. An electoral picnic will take place: an actual debate in the form of a concert, followed by a ballot. Will we be happy under the rule of a democratically elected musical option? We shall see…

A more serious and grown-up experience will be featured in a “concert for two pianos” at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Two noble instruments of such gravity… but their music will often be featherlight. The fairly serious composers whose works will be played won’t let us grow up; we might even build castles in the air, lifted by the sounds of prepared pianos…

A crazy painter is someone who won’t rest, and won’t let us rest, in his unbound creative craze. You’d ask, what is a painter doing at a music festival? Of course, he is painting with sounds! On a canvas! How? Come and experience it at the Ujazdowski Castle: the artist will explain how painting gestures can be heard.

But if you feel tired with the voting, overwhelmed with the sound of two pianos, and thrown into the whirl of the crazy painter’s music, come find respite on the Isle of Sirens. You will find it hidden in the cellars of the Museum of Warsaw, reached through a labyrinth of sirens’ songs that will guide you like a track. Soothed and relaxed, you will be ready for new experiences that are waiting nearby, in an old kitchen oven in one of the Museum’s building: The Hiding Place of Sounds.

Paulina Celińska
Little Warsaw Autumn Curator