ECLAT 2017, Stuttgart, Germany

Unlike many other New Music festivals, Eclat has so far resisted the temptation to build the festival programmes around central themes. The Eclat festival is one of the major annual gatherings of the German and international scene for contemporary music, taking place in Stuttgart and organised by ‘Musik der Jahrhunderte’ (Christine Fischer) in collaboration with the SWR (Lydia Jeschke). The lack of a central theme doesn't indicate a pragmatic or vague approach to curation, but the festival organisers’ aim to assemble a selection of artists, ensembles and pieces that are either directly asking or indirectly raising questions considered relevant and at the forefront of the scene's discourse at the time of the event.