From today until the end of this week (2nd-8th of November 2026), one of the country's most important events dedicated to contemporary music, the MERIDIAN International Festival, now in its 21st edition, is taking place in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași. For the third consecutive year, the theme is SONIMAGICON, inviting audiences to explore the relationship between sound and the visual arts from multiple perspectives.

In Bucharest, the festival opens this evening with the multimedia performance "VORTEX", hosted by the National Opera starting at 7 p.m.

Composer Diana Rotaru, the festival's artistic director, tells us about the 2026 edition of the Meridian Festival, the vast universe of new music and much more:

The 21st edition of the Meridian International Festival takes place from the 2nd to 8th of November in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași. For the third consecutive year, the theme is SONIMAGICON, exploring the relationship between sound and the visual arts. How is this theme approached in the 2026 edition?

It is approached in much the same way as in the previous two editions - we want to place a strong emphasis on interdisciplinarity. This is actually one of the main objectives of our festival. We have music, video art, 3D animation, all kinds of audio-visual creations, and a special concert in Timișoara dedicated to this new artistic form. We also have spectacular elements such as dance, performance art, multimedia shows and a whole range of artistic adventures in this direction.

What are some of the must-see events for audiences across the country?

I should mention that we are delighted to be able to say "audiences across the country", because ever since our team took over the organisation of the Meridian Festival, we have been trying to decentralise it and move beyond Bucharest. We now have an increasing number of events in the festival's four host cities: Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași.

In Bucharest, the opening is spectacular in the truest sense of the word, because it is a concert-performance, a multimedia concert at the Bucharest National Opera, on Monday, November 2nd. It is called Vortex and explores repetition in music in its various forms, whether hypnotic, ritualistic, visceral or obsessive. I would like to thank the artists involved: pianists Adriana Maier and Adriana Toacsen, percussionists Vlad Polgar and Ioana Ailenei, as well as the video artists from Ordoetchao, our collaborators and dear friends for several years now, Ioana Buraga and Vlad Grigore. They create an absolutely sensational visual counterpoint to the music being performed, which covers a broad spectrum, from American minimalism to Bartók's masterpiece, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. So, Vortex on November 2nd.

I should also highlight the presence in Bucharest of an exceptionally gifted accordionist, Maria Mogas Gensana, who will perform on Tuesday at Lahovari Hall, formerly Teatrelli Hall. She is here with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum, to whom we are grateful, and of Andrei Popov, a great friend of the festival. You will hear a very different kind of accordion - don't expect the party-style accordion you might be familiar with. This is an experimental accordion, one that sometimes imitates the Japanese shō, a mouth organ, as in Toshio Hosokawa's piece, or explores all kinds of extended techniques, as well as the extreme theatricality of both the performer and the instrument, in a work by British composer Rebecca Saunders.

And, very importantly, three young composers, members of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania (UCMR), have written works specifically for Maria. They were selected through an open call: Oana Vardianu, George Păiș and Andrei Petrache. I believe these three names are already very familiar to audiences in Bucharest and beyond. Each has approached the accordion in a completely different way, ranging from Byzantine influences to jazz and even what I would call crazy rock. So I would say this is definitely a concert not to be missed.

We are also delighted to welcome long-established ensembles to the festival, such as DevotioModerna, which will once again present a project featuring multimedia and performance elements, alongside The Mad Hatterpillers, a performance ensemble.

The fabulous Profil Ensemble will give a concert dedicated to composers celebrating anniversaries this year and, more broadly, to the great masters who have influenced so many generations of composers.

The extraordinary Trio Larsson will present a beautiful concert entitled Embracing, a reference to the embrace through music that these wonderful artists offer every time they take the stage and share their music with the audience.

Another very interesting multimedia performance is Woody, featuring music by Sabina Ulubeanu, a name well known to audiences, and taking place at ARCUB - Gabroveni.

There is also a hypnotic and extremely creative performance, the kind of thing only Irinel Anghel could come up with, entitled HypnoHub. In this performance, the audience, as if taking part in an imaginary video game, can access 11 possible realities, 11 worlds, 11 skins, which they arrange before the concert. There is a website where people planning to attend can choose which scene they would like the performance to begin with. This is yet another extremely original and commendable idea.

We also have Strings IN ConnectiON, featuring Cătălin Crețu and Ladislaus Csendes, who will take us on a journey through time, from 17th-century music to the present day, using the violin, computers, electronic media and live processing.

Another concert, presented by the Romanian Cultural Institute, is SONORAMA. Among its many extraordinary works, it features Octavian Nemescu's masterpiece Centrifuga, for piano and electronic media, another hypnotic piece and a new vortex of sounds. It also includes an absolutely delightful piece of instrumental music theatre entitled The Singing Lesson, by Adrian Iorgulescu.

I would also like to thank Iași, because the "George Enescu" National University of Arts is presenting two fantastic concerts featuring the TimbrIS ensemble, a newly established group conducted by Izabela Vieriu, who is also a composer, and the ProMusica Academica Clarinet Ensemble. Their programmes will include works by composers from Iași, as well as from Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

In Timișoara, we are delighted to have partnered with the Simultan Festival, which is also very dear to us. Together, we are organising an event dedicated to exploring audio-visual creations, entitled Sounding the Screen, on the 5th of November.

And in Cluj, we are delighted to have two wonderful friends, both personally and as part of the festival: composers Cristian Bence-Muk, who is organising a concert featuring composers from Cluj entitled Cluj Metamorphoses, and Alexandru Murariu, who is also a member of the festival team and has developed a sensational project called Surround Surreal. It explores spatialisation in music through various methods, a fascinating subject that is also extremely difficult to put into practice. But Alexandru has rolled up his sleeves and worked very hard on this project, which I am convinced will shake up Cluj.

What would you say to someone attending a new music event for the first time?

I wouldn't tell them anything other than to come with an open mind and open ears. This is extremely expressive music, music of our time, which represents us better than anything else, and it is incredibly diverse. Anyone who has the courage to attend every event at the Meridian Festival from the 2nd to the 8th of November will discover just how many different kinds of music are being created today, from repetitive minimalist music to music influenced by post-Romanticism, from highly experimental and quirky compositions to performance art and noise-based music. There are so many different directions, often represented within a single concert, so we simply invite everyone to enjoy the buffet of sound bites that is the Meridian Festival.

You were the artistic coordinator of World New Music Days 2026, the most important event dedicated to contemporary music to have taken place in Romania in the past three decades. What impressions and hopes have stayed with you since then, and what would you perhaps like to carry forward into the Meridian Festival?

I came away with an enormous sense of joy and an equally enormous sense of exhaustion! I would like to thank once again Mr Dan Dediu, the artistic director of the festival and president of the organizing body, UCMR. The initiative and all this enthusiasm came from him, and the entire team rallied around it.

I was delighted to see so many international guests in Bucharest who were impressed by and appreciative of the quality of Romanian performers. That was truly heartwarming.

I was also delighted to hear so much music from all corners of the world, and I believe this international dimension is something we should continue to explore as much as possible. We are all part of an embracing, yes, an embrace - or at least we should be, constantly, as musicians from every corner of the world. These festivals can create opportunities for encounters that can lead to truly fruitful collaborations.

I was also very happy to see concert halls filled with audiences for contemporary music performances. Here, I would also like to thank our wonderful PR specialist, Bianca Boitan. But I believe people were genuinely interested in the events and in the opportunity to experience music from all over the world simply by stepping outside their homes and walking into a concert hall in Bucharest. And I sincerely hope that this event, which received such a warm international response, will continue to resonate and that it has helped establish Romania more firmly on the international map of contemporary music. I hope many more wonderful things will happen in the years to come.