Tectonics is a Music Festival curated by Ilan Volkov and Alasdair Campbell, proudly presented by BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. It takes place at City Halls, Glasgow, 9-11 May.

It is hard to believe that this is only our second Tectonics Glasgow as the support and engagement the festival has received from audiences has been remarkable. This year another night has been added (at St Andrew’s in the Square) which encapsulates the spirit of Tectonics: Scotland-based artists, international guests and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra perform as broad a series of works and sound-worlds that you are likely to hear anywhere. 

Following last year’s visit by the incomparable Alvin Lucier, Tectonics Glasgow 2014 welcomes three more pioneering and towering figures: Christian Wolff, David Behrman and Takehisa Kosugi. Christian is 80 this year but is as youthful as ever and still writes some of the most challenging and experimental music around. Behrman has four works in the festival - a new orchestral piece, a classic electro-acoustic work for guitar pickups and piano, and two superimposed works for solo and an instrumental ensemble.

Kosugi, the music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and a legendary performer, will perform both a rare solo set and a duo with Sonic Youth’s guitarist and champion of experimental exploration, Thurston Moore.

Space and location are an important consideration for us, and many site-specific works are being specially devised by the artists: the Edinburgh duo Usurper, the Glasgow-based female band Muscles of Joy and Richard Youngs are all creating works for the Old Fruitmarket; Sarah Kenchington will fill the Recital Room with weird and wonderful musical instruments; James Weeks’s Radical Road for the Glasgow Chamber Choir and the Glasgow University Chapel Choir will use the foyer areas of the building ; and the beautiful surroundings of St Andrew’s in the Square will be exploited in the opening night’s tryst of new music. There’s also a strong vocal presence this year, from EXAUDI’s performances with the BBC SSO to a solo set from Richard Youngs.

A British experimentalist strand runs through the festival, with the composers Finnissy, Fox, Saunders, Priestley and Clapperton all contributing work, while there are World Premieres of BBC Commissions from Georg Friedrich Haas, Klaus Lang and John Oswald. Late-night on Saturday promises an adventure into noise and searing beauty with the recently formed duo of Thurston Moore and Brighton-based Dylan Nyoukis, and the return to Scotland of the mesmeric Cindytalk. Cindytalk have been exploring the further reaches of song and deconstructed electronics for over 30 years and this will be the first time in as many years that they have played in Scotland.

Join us for Round 2 of these investigations into the sublime...

Ilan Volkov and Alasdair Campbell curators

Alasdair Campbell/AC Projects acknowledges the support of Creative Scotland and PRS for Music Foundation