Mixtur’s 15th edition runs from 15 to 25 October across 11 Barcelona venues. It features 24 concerts, sound installations and family activities. The festival opens at L’Auditori on Thursday 15 October at 19.30 with the Orquesta Sinfònica de la ESMUC.
Conducted by Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, the orchestra will perform works by Igor Stravinsky and Beat Furrer, joined by pianist Ana Ostojic. The programme then presents the premiere of Obertura by Joan Magrané.
Founded in 2012, Mixtur focuses on contemporary and electroacoustic music, sound art and interdisciplinary projects. Its programme brings concerts together with premieres, installations, lectures, educational programmes and workshops.
The opening night also links two anniversaries: fifteen years of Mixtur and the ESMUC’s 25th anniversary.
The festival takes new music beyond the conventional concert hall, using different spaces and formats. Rei Nakamura will explore the piano through multimedia, with electronics and video shaping the presentation. The flute quartet Neuma will present Daughters as a musical and stage work.
Vertixe Sonora will bring music and cinema together through fragments of VAMPIRES by Núria Giménez-Comas. The performance uses projections from the serial film Les Vampires.
Fabra i Coats: Fàbrica de Creació hosts the Ulysses Ensemble on 17 October, at the end of its European tour. The group arrives after performances in Milan and Paris.
Led by Nacho de Paz, the ensemble will perform new works commissioned by the festival from Carolina Cerezo Dávila and Alex Vaughan. The wider programme also features Rei Nakamura and Claude Delangle, alongside Carlota Cáceres, Neuma, Trio Abstrakt and Vertixe Sonora.
Mixtur’s 2026 programme also reaches basic schools. Through the Mixtur a Primària project, pupils at Escola Institut Tramuntana in Barcelona created a collective musical work by analysing compositional language. Oriol Saladrigues i Brunet, one of Mixtur’s founders, continued in the festival’s artistic leadership alongside Rappoport.
From 15 to 18 October, Fabra i Coats presents sound installations by Jani Ruscica, Enric Socias and Luz González. Their projects explore the body’s interaction with technology, alongside themes of disappearance and persistence.
The same venue hosts Jaume Padrós i les alquímies del so, an exhibition dedicated to the Catalan composer on the centenary of his birth.
Mixtur will also open up its creative process through four workshops on composition and performance. Concerts will share work developed with the public, including improvisation.
Nine free-entry conferences will feature composers such as Sarah Nemtsov and Luca Francesconi, as well as Beat Furrer and Isabel Mundry. Two round tables will consider contemporary music in Spain and the challenges of making music in Europe.
Where an earlier Martorell report raised industrial questions, Mixtur puts cultural access in the foreground: most concerts are free, and audiences can encounter contemporary music in several formats.
Families can attend Museu dels quadres sonors by Cia. La Curiosa, which pairs a performance with a workshop. Ptitécouti by HANATSUmiroir offers a sound experience for babies and children up to three years old.
L’Auditori and Fabra i Coats: Fàbrica de Creació are among the Barcelona venues involved. The programme also reaches the Museu de la Música, the ESMUC and Santa Mònica. Most events are free.
