Currents Festival 2024 & the New Amsterdam Records Partnership: L’Rain, Moor Mother, Noémi Büchi, Sopraterra, No Plexus, and Wolfert Brederode
The first-ever Currents Festival, presented in association with New Amsterdam Records, took place from March 6th to the 9th in Zürich with a mix of artists from Switzerland, the USA, and beyond.
The first-ever Currents Festival, presented in association with New Amsterdam Records, took place from March 6th to the 9th in Zürich, Switzerland, serving an incredible four-day experience that captured a remarkable cross-section of work from around the world.
Currents is a new annual event that extends the work of the Apples & Olives Festival, a biannual festival with the same leadership team, in new and exciting directions. This year’s edition, with hubs at Moods and EXIL on Zurich’s Hardstrasse, featured a mix of artists from Switzerland, the USA, and beyond. Headliners included L’Rain and Moor Mother from the US, Noémi Büchi and Sopraterra (Magda Drozd / Nicola Genocese) from Switzerland, and No Plexus (Brechtje van Dijk/Allison Wright) and Wolfert Brederode from the Netherlands. Currents’ focus is to “create opportunities for artists to work beyond the boundaries of their regular practice…by bringing artists of different styles together and giving them time to create and collaborate.”
“Every night was completely distinct and powerful on its own terms”, shares Judd Greenstein, co-artistic director of New Amsterdam Records and close collaborator of the Currents Festival, who traveled from Massachussetts to Zürich and offered some takeaways about his experience with us. “What tied together all the artists was a sense of them taking us on a unique journey, with a palpable sense of storytelling that took many different forms.” Other partners and figures in charge of this neo:classical experience are Etienne Abelin, Ynight, former member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and currently Music Director of the Empire State Youth Orchestra, Nik Bärtsch, EXIL Club co-founder and leader of the Zenfunk band Ronin, Philipp Cron, former program manager at Casino Bern, and Jakob Blumer, cultural entrepreneur.
The festival kicked off its program at Exil Club with Wolfert Brederode, accompanied by the Matangi Quartet, and Joost Lijbaart who, according to Greenstein, “played with our sense of nostalgia in capturing an emotional arc that reflected on a century of global conflict and war” while premiering their suite for piano, percussion, and string quartet called “Ruins and Remains”. This piece came to Brederode’s mind back in 2018, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War.
Thursday was a double feature night at Exil with No Plexus, who shared music from their debut album Rite of Passage, and Sopraterra, the new duo of Magda Drozd and Nicola Genovese who “created a sound world that drew from many streams and birthed something altogether new and fresh,” shares Judd.
Taja Cheek aka L’Rain, the multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and curator, was featured on Friday and offered a performance that, “simply boggled the mind. Their live show elevated the songs from their incredible albums to new heights of musicianship and impact”, says Greenstein. This time, she was accompanied by collaborators Andrew Lappin and Ben Chapoteau-Katz.
The festival ended with “astonishing sonic results” by Noémi Buchi and her new Cataclysm ensemble, as well as the trio of Moor Mother ft. Vanessa Sin and Imani Mason Jordan who “posed questions that challenged the audience to reflect on our complicity in racist, colonialist, homophobic, and patriarchal structures, while inviting us into a dynamic musical space that created the possibility of imagining a liberated future,” shares Judd.
New Amsterdam Records hopes that this is the first of many Currents Festivals to come and that we can partner with other organizations and venues around the world to bring these kinds of international, artist-centered, genre-fluid spaces into being.
As our co-AD said it best, “This is how we build a new musical infrastructure that serves communities and benefits artists and audiences alike — brick by brick.”
Visit currents.ch for more information.
Writer Note: From 2014-2022, NewAm served as an associate presenter of the Apples & Olives Festival, based in Zürich, Switzerland. The festival brought artists together from the US, Switzerland, and beyond, for a characteristically genre-fluid exploration of sounds from different communities. Past artists included familiar NewAm names such as NOW Ensemble, Shara Nova, Missy Mazzoli and Daniel Wohl, US friends of the label like Dawn of Midi, Kelly Moran, Bent Knee, and Greg Fox, Swiss standouts like Colliding Fields, Nik Bärtsch, Marena Whitcher, Kordz, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Nicolas Stocker, Helena Winkelman, and Elia Rediger, and European artists such as Actress, Maarja Nuut, Valgeir Sigur∂sson, Thomas Azier, Francesca Gaza, and Saskia Lankhoorn.
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