Welcome Message

Brian of Nazareth: You’re all individuals!

The Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals!

Brian of Nazareth: You’re all different!

The Crowd: Yes, we are all different!

A voice in the crowd: I’m not…

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Making music is largely a collective activity. Even when only one person is playing. Or when loudspeakers stand in place of people. Because someone is listening. (Even if they are not actively listening, they are certainly hearing.) Yes, one of the fundamental essences of music lies precisely in this sense of connectivity and collectivity that already comes into being simply through the performer(s) and listener(s) sharing a common space. Just as sound itself, a basic element of music, becomes real in physical space, while in our consciousness and minds it turns into an entity that carries meaning.

The natural personal quality of music, or the nature of this personal quality, is elusive and almost impossible to grasp precisely – and of course not only because its most important components, sound and time, cannot be held in one’s hands (at least not in physical reality). Thus, like sound in space, we arrive full circle.

It is, in itself, an enduring mystery whether, when we listen to a soloist, they speak as a member of a broadly understood community –  on its behalf, against it, for it, or addressing it – or whether they are simply expressing their own individual character. And when we make music together, do we experience the distinct traits and singularities of the individuals involved, shared in a common time and space? Or do these individual features dissolve into the dynamics of collective operation, reflecting a unified, deviation-free “position” of the collective?

In any case, the result is certainly far more than the sum of its parts. More and less than them at the same time – but most importantly, without them it could not (or could not in this way) have come into being. And this is profoundly true of the 2026 Transparent Sound New Music Festival as well.

As an individual, yet on behalf of a community, I warmly invite everyone to our events.

Marcell Dargay