Barcelona’s Sónar electronic music festival opens its doors

Barcelona (ACN).- Sónar 2011 opened its doors today in Barcelona’s Centre of Contemporary Culture (CCCB) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), the music festival’s traditional venues. It is considered one of electronic music’s most important events at world level and takes place every year in Barcelona in mid-June. It is a completely consolidated festival and half of the audience comes from outside Spain. Furthermore, Sánar, officially called The International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art, has sisters events throughout the year in cities such as Tokyo, Chicago, and London, and in 2012 it will also have a parallel event in Brazil’s Sao Paulo. This year’s 18^th edition has a parallel festival taking place at the same time called Sónar Galicia, which will take place in A Coruña on June 17^th and 18^th. Sónar Barcelona, the original festival and the largest and most complete edition kicked off this Thursday June 16^th and will close its doors on Saturday June 18^th, with DJ sessions that will last until the early hours of Sunday. Three days of advanced music with more than 175 performances on 8 stages. Nicolas Jarr and Little Dragon were some of the first artists to display their music. M.I.A., Underworld, Aphex Twin, Magnetic Man, Janelle Monáe, The Human League, Chris Cunningham, Four Tet, or Hyoe Williams are some of the artists invited in this year’s edition. Tickets are completely sold for Saturday and organisers expect to sell all of them and a similar amount of attendees than in previous years. Sónar Barcelona has also a programme for children called Sónar Kids and for professional called Sónar Pro.

The festival will have different venues across Barcelona, apart from the CCCB and the MACBA. L’Auditori Concert Hall will host Steve Reich’s performance this Thursday night. The CosmoCaixa science museum is organising an exhibition on bird sounds.

The festival wants to continue with its spirit of discovery: bringing international artists not so well known in Spain and being a platform for local artists to be discovered abroad. The festival’s good vibes, small performances, discovering new bands or enjoying good weather are some of the reasons why some of the foreigners present are attending the festival, who mainly come for the entire three days. Catalan attendees are split and many only come for just one day, to listen to specific groups or to discover new talents.