This October, soundfestival returns for 10 days of new and experimental music across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. Beginning with a programme of climate-themed community workshops with Danish EnsembleLydenskab from 20–22 October, the festival continues from 22–31 October with more than 30 concerts, recitals, workshops, installations and events.
Continuing our festival format across two weekends, we’re bringing together some of the most exciting voices in new music from Scotland, the UK, Europe and further afield, while creating a platform for local talent here in the North East. We’re delighted to welcome back familiar faces, including our associate artists Red Note Ensemble and Any Enemy, as well as our friends Quatuor Bozzini from Montréal, alongside artists joining soundfestival for the very first time.
This year’s programme reaches from concert halls to some rather more unexpected spaces. Quatuor Bozzini return to perform James Weeks’ six weatherworld quartets, collaborate with Any Enemy and lead our three-day Composers’ Lab, while Red Note Ensemble present new commissions and world premieres alongside a collaboration with French electro-acoustic musicians Les Harmoniques du Néon. Elsewhere, the New European Ensemble joins leading Scottish writer Ali Smith for new works inspired by her Seasonal Quartet novels, Edinburgh Quartet gives the World Premiere of a new work by Ben Lunn, and clarinettist Sarah Watts and composer and sound artist Duncan MacLeod take new music into a former nuclear bunker.
Audiences will also encounter music and sound in different forms throughout the festival, from Leona Jones’ award-winning radio work apeiron to installations including Raydale Dower’s Single Drop and Claudia Molitor’s Silent Seas, which explores the impact of underwater noise pollution.
Running throughout soundfestival 2026 is a simple but important idea: Listening.
Listening might seem like an obvious part of experiencing music and sound, but what does it mean to really listen? Across the festival, a number of events invite us to explore that question from different perspectives. It isn’t only about audiences listening, either. Performers listen, composers listen, and the act of listening itself can shape how music is created, shared and experienced.
At a time when the world can feel increasingly noisy, we want soundfestival to offer space to listen differently, to open our ears, encounter unfamiliar sounds and pay closer attention to what is happening around us.
We hope you’ll join us, listen with curiosity and enjoy this year's festival.
