The Second Aotearoa International Festival of Secret Sounds - Lineup Announced

The Audio Foundation team are already back in their Tāmaki Makaurau office / venue hub, nestled next to the leafy green expanses of Myers Park, doing the hard mahi to bring adventurous listeners top quality events of all shapes in 2025. They're commencing this year's live programme with the announcement of The Second Aotearoa International Festival of Secret Sounds, inviting special guest sonic practitioners from around the globe to create new works, alongside local luminaries at a variety of super city spaces from 12th to 19th February.

Visitors from abroad include Scandinavian avant-folk singer Anna Fält, performing with award-winning Pārāwai Thames-based composer / synthesist Karl Sölve Steven — notably their first local live event together since the release of 2024's standout collaborative album V Ä V A. The jam-packed festival launches with the opening of an exhibition by Australian visual artist / sculptor / sound artist Victor Meertens in the AF gallery space. Read the official full lowdown below, note the schedule details and head along...

"Audio Foundation kick starts the new year with a stunning lineup of local and international sound, music and performance. The Second Aotearoa International Festival of Secret Sounds sees visitors from France, Sweden, Australia and Germany create new works alongside and in collaboration with Aotearoa based artists in an array of venues and settings.

Highlights include Scandinavian avant-folk singer Anna Fält in collaboration with local heroes Karl Sölve Steven and The Palcontents, alternative singer-songwriter Simon Joyner from the USA, legendary collective HUBBUB which features some of the leading voices in French improvised and experimental music, prolific Australian visual, sound and performance artist Victor Meertens and his close collaborator Alexis Ensor of the Charles Ives Singers, a newly commissioned work by ex-pat composer Flo Wilson featuring six singers and six amplified speakers, Taonga Puoro specialist Rob Thorne and his new free jazz trio, and many more performers activating the acoustics of the Audio Foundation, Auckland Unitarian, Silo 6, Whammy Public Bar, Kim Meredith Gallery, Western Park and 1A Tuarangi Road, Grey Lynn".

The Second Aotearoa International Festival of Secret Sounds

Wednesday 12th February to Wednesday 19th February - various venues, Auckland (full schedule below)

Festival passes on sale HERE via UTR (individual show passes also available)
More information from www.audiofoundation.org.nz

SCHEDULE:

WED 12 FEB - AUDIO FOUNDATION – OPENING NIGHT

5.30pm - VICTOR MEERTENS EXHIBITION OPENING
Renowned Australian visual artist, sculptor & sound artist presents a new exhibition to launch the festival and the Audio Foundation 2025 gallery programme. (Free)

8pm – Tickets from UTR
Victor Meertens & Alexis Ensor Two
thirds of legendary experimental group The Charles Ives Singers bring found objects, invented instruments and an abundance of joy.

HUBBUB
Since 1999, Hubbub works on the sound matter to open up a moving space, inhabited by layers, distensions, entanglements, imbrications, pulsations, dots and lines. Between acoustic and electric, at the crossroads of several worlds, the group consists of five musicians whose activities trace multiple ramifications. The quintet's longevity has allowed them to create a universe that is more than the sum of its parts.

"Imagine the opening fanfare of Strauss’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra slowed down so it takes a year to play." Daniel Spicer, The Wire

• Frédéric Blondy - piano
• Bertrand Denzler - tenor saxophone
• Jean-Luc Guionnet – alto saxophone
• Jean-Sébastien Mariage - electric guitar
• Edward Perraud - percussion

THURS 13 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION - 8PM

HUBBUB with local guest improvisors

• Frédéric Blondy - piano
• Bertrand Denzler - tenor saxophone
• Jean-Luc Guionnet - alto saxophone
• Jean-Sébastien Mariage - electric guitar
• Edward Perraud - percussion

FRI 14 FEB - AK UNITARIAN CHURCH – 8pm

• Simon Joyner (USA)
Simon Joyner is a singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska. He's been flying under the radar since 1991, releasing music on various independent labels including: Team Love, Jagjaguwar, Sing Eunuchs!, Catsup Plate, One-Hour, Shrimper, Brinkman, Secretly Canadian, and Unread. He is also the co-founder of Grapefruit Records (grapefruitrecordclub.com) and an occasional producer of other people's albums.

• Anna Fält (Sweden) & Karl Sölve Steven
Karl Sölve Steven is a composer and producer, currently based in Pārāwai (Thames) and Anna Fält is a voice artist & singing teacher originally from Finland, living in Sweden.
Anna Fält works widely within the culture branch, including theatre stages, art projects and various festivals and venues. Born & raised in Finland, living in Sweden, Anna combines the different voice traditions, languages and singing aesthetics to a unique combination of sounds.

• Rob Thorne – Taonga Puoro
New Zealand Māori composer, performer, improvisor, collaborator, anthropologist and specialist Rob Thorne M.A. (Ngāti Tumutumu) is a diverse and original explorer in the evolving journey of Taonga Puoro (traditional Māori instruments), fusing these ancient voices with modern sounds and technology.

SAT 15 FEB

2PM - 1A Tuarangi Road, Grey Lynn

A Place to Play Clarinet
The final chapter in a series of clarinet concerts initiated by contemporary artist J.A KENNEDY Performed by Callum Passells, Ben Sinclair , Lukas Fritsch, Sean Martin-Buss & Jeff Henderson

pm - WESTERN PARK - Tip Sculptures, Ponsonby Road
Conduction by 10 Acre Bloc, an ensemble drawn from the rich pool of improvisers in the Vitamin S Collective.
” The TIP works refer to a loss of our past via the wholesale demolition of parts of Auckland City. Dumped in countless nameless landfills, maybe these multiple architectural dismemberments have undergone a subterranean reassembly and are about to lurch back up out of the ground ” – Artist John Radford

7.30PM - AUDIO FOUNDATION

• Rob Thorne / Larsen Taylor / Ryan Tomov
• Drew McMillan / Rui Inaba /Finn McNeil
• Victor Meertens / Hermione Johnson / Alexis Ensor
• Neil Feather Rotozither Trio

SUN 16 FEB - SILO 6 - 7.00pm Beaumont Street & Jellicoe Street, Auckland

György Ligeti - Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes
Flo Wilson - music for 6 speakers, 6 singers
Alan D. Jones - Mass Pointillistic Tryptych (various percussive resonances)

MON 17 FEB - Whammy Public Bar – 8pm (free)

AIFSS @ VITAMIN S
A Vitamin S Special featuring festival performers and Vitamin S artists in collaboration

TUES 18 FEB - KIM MEREDITH GALLERY - 247 Symonds Street, Eden Terrace

• The Palcontents with Anna Fält
• Paul Buckton / Jess Quaid / Victor Meertens
• Kingsley Melhuish / Steve Cournane / Alexis Ensor

WED 19 FEB - AUDIO FOUNDATION - 8pm

CLOSING NIGHT VARIETY SHOW

Listen to 'Ähky' from Anna Fält and Karl Sölve Steven's 2024 collaborative album V Ä V A...