The 18th edition of the SoNoRo Festival will begin on Friday with a concert at the Bragadiru Palace, with the Janoska Ensemble on stage, made up of four musicians trained in classical music, recognised worldwide as masters of improvisation, the organisers announced.

The cultural event will take place in Bucharest from 27 October to 5 November and will continue in Cluj from 6 to 12 November 2023.

This year’s theme is “On the Couch,” inspired by the cultural effervescence in Vienna at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, but also by the flowering of psychoanalytic disciplines.

“The public will enjoy a programme that will contain 70% of new works in the history of the festival, and many of them will be performed for the first time in Romania. Also, in this edition, two concerts are scheduled at the Radio Hall, two at the Romanian Athenaeum and two at the National Museum of Art of Romania – in the Royal Hall and in the Auditorium Hall – but also in unconventional spaces such as the Recul Theatre or the Expirat Club,” says a press release sent by the organisers.

The SoNoRo Festival is also known for its multidisciplinary approach to the programme, so this year two concerts are scheduled, which include, in addition to the concert, a visit to the museums in which it is held – the Museum of Recent Art, with a visit to the Picasso Effect exhibition, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, with a guided tour.

In Cluj-Napoca, four of the seven concerts will take place in new venues – Casino – Centre for Urban Culture, Evangelical-Lutheran Church, ARTA Cinema and Meron Roastery. In the other three venues, the festival returns with the joy of a collaboration based on the passion for music and musicians – Casa Boema, the Academic College – Auditorium Maximum Hall, within the Babes- Bolyai University, and the National Museum of Transylvanian History, says the source.

“We are ready for another edition of the SoNoRo Festival and we invite the audience to follow us, as always, with confidence in what we will experience together. This year, with the theme On the Couch, we will probe our emotions and perhaps bring to even greater heights all the vulnerability, but also the strength that each of us has in the deep layers of the unconscious. We have a mostly new programme, spectacular spaces and musicians who have agreed to enter the game proposed by Diana Ketler and me, eager to perform not only the works, but to be observers of their own lives. In addition, the SoNoRo TALKS – ON THE COUCH series of meetings will be a gain of this edition, through the heartfelt discussions about music and inspiration. We believe we have enough arguments for the audience to want to be together at as many concerts as possible,” SoNoRo Festival Executive Director Razvan Popovici is quoted as saying in the press release.