Kali Malone (USA) / Širom (SI) / Królówczana Smuga (PL) / Non-adaptive Dance Music (PL) / Gary Gwadera (PL)
Timetable:
Neo-folk stage:
19 00 Non-adaptive Dance Music (PL)
20 00 Gary Gwadera (PL)
Main Stage:
20 15 Królówczana Smuga (PL)
21 00 Širom (SI)
22 00 Kali Malone (USA)
Kali Malone composes and performs with a clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances; letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a space for reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods and historical tuning systems become portals to new ways of perceiving harmony, structure, and introspection. She has performed extensively, presenting her music at Lincoln Center, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Radio France, Rockefeller Chapel, Grace Cathedral, The Southbank Center, Bozar, Schauspielhaus, Berghain, Unsound Festival, Berlin Atonal, and Kanal Pompidou amongst many other museums, contemporary art spaces, concert halls, churches, and festivals throughout Europe, North America, Japan and Australia. Her commissioned work and residencies include the Ina GRM, The Venice Biennale, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Orgelpark, and Lafayette Anticipations. She has collaborated and performed with various artists, including Stephen O’Malley, Lucy Railton, Caterina Barbieri, Macadam Ensemble, Leila Bordreuil, and Drew McDowall.
Širom is a Slovenian trio weaving a unique sonic universe where diverse musical traditions, handcrafted instruments, and limitless imagination converge. Hailing from the regions of Prekmurje, Tolminsko, and Kras, members Iztok Koren, Samo Kutin, and Ana Kravanja perform with more than a dozen instruments, creating richly textured compositions that blend folk-rooted sounds with experimental rock, acoustic minimalism, and improvisation. Their music defies easy classification — earthy and mystical, meditative yet full of momentum, closer to a band than a chamber group, and more rooted in the rawness of the street than in the polish of the urban. Since their debut in 2015, Širom has released a series of critically acclaimed albums on Glitterbeat Records, with their fifth studio album set for release in autumn 2025.
A one-man song-and-dance ensemble by Adam Piętak, an artist from Biłgoraj in eastern Poland. His music emerges through distorted guitar sounds that seem to echo from forgotten, dust-covered instruments—like relics discovered in an attic or unearthed from a hidden forest grave. His voice—far from traditional “white voice” singing—resembles that of a weathered wanderer: raw, unpolished, and deeply evocative.
At its core, Królówczana Smuga is about reviving silenced, uncomfortable, or long-lost memories—rooted in the cultural soil of Biłgoraj. Yet this is not an act of ethnocentric nostalgia. Biłgoraj serves rather as a point of departure, an invitation for listeners to seek out their own “lost truths” buried within the landscapes of their personal or ancestral homelands.
Where do the boundaries of dance music lie? Are behaviors associated with music adaptive? How can rural music exist today? Non-adaptive Dance Music is a research project exploring these questions at the intersection of raw Polish dance music and live electronic performance. The duo draws inspiration from archival recordings of rural music, the legacy of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, and innovative applications of machine learning algorithms in music. https://www.instagram.com/non_adaptivedancemusic/
Gary Gwadera is the solo project of Piotr Gwadera—a drummer from Kielce and a pivotal figure of the Łódź music scene. Known for his versatility and unique artistic voice, Gwadera effortlessly brings surprising character to any musical context, whether it’s rock, punk, experimental, jazz, or free improvisation.In recent years, he has also become one of Poland’s most distinctive percussionists in the realm of rural traditional music, celebrated especially for his masterful and inventive use of triple rhythms in dance tunes. A true connoisseur of sound, he has a passion for vintage drums, cymbals, and analog media—VHS tapes and magnetic recordings of all kinds. His main bands include Radical Polish Ansambl, Odpoczno, and L.Stadt. He has collaborated with international and Polish artists such as Bernhard Lang, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Steven Bernstein, Marcin Masecki, and Antoni Gralak.
https://www.instagram.com/gary_gwadera/
https://pointless-geometry.bandcamp.com/album/gary-gwadera-far-far-in-chicago-footberk-suite
