About us
The Monheim Triennale is a music festival in which pioneering artistic positions in contemporary music are made audible and come into contact with each other across styles. In the process, current improvised, composed and popular music are brought into relationship with each other on an equal footing.
The Monheim Triennale is a cycle of events that extends over three consecutive years. The editions, which are interwoven in terms of content and personnel, are called The Sound, The Prequel and The Festival.
The Monheim Triennale goes beyond the mere presentation of concerts and creates open spaces for artistic stagings, encounters and experiments – sometimes also in public places. The invited artists can each be heard several times with and in exclusive, new formats, thus allowing the audience to participate in the full range of their work.
The first Monheim Triennale started on July 1, 2020 with the sound production "Could You Patent the Sun?" by composer Marcus Schmickler. The staging was a Corona-reduced foretaste of the works of the following years, in which during The Prequel 2021 and The Festival 2022 the artists created music and sound projects in exclusive formations, so-called signature projects, which were tailored to each other and to the people and places in Monheim am Rhein.
In this way, the Monheim Triennale repeatedly offers all interested people the opportunity to directly encounter contemporary art and even be a part of it in diverse collaborations with local ensembles, schools and other educational institutions via installations, concerts and lecture performances in public spaces.
Looking ahead to the first Monheim Triennial from 2020 to 2022, artistic director Reiner Michalke says: "The concept of enabling artists from all over the world to realize their desired projects has worked in every respect. We thus not only had numerous world premieres on stage, but above all an exciting insight into the current creativity of the music of our time." Michalke was artistic director of the European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music in the Stadtgarten in Cologne from 1986 to mid-2022 and artistic director of the Moers Festival from 2006 to 2016.
Mayor Daniel Zimmermann: "I am very euphoric about the atmosphere in the first three years of the Monheim Triennale and grateful for the opportunity to hear these great concerts. A big thank you to everyone who participated in this wonderful project, also for the collaborations with children from Monheim am Rhein, which also bring parents to the concerts and promote cultural education."
The Monheim Triennale II will start on June 3, 2023 with the sound art festival The Sound - Sonic Art in Public Spaces.
The other dates of the second Monheim Triennale have also been set:
July 3-7, 2024, will be followed by The Prequel, which will present the new generation of signature artists.
And from July 2 to 6, 2025, the big The Festival will follow as the climax and conclusion of the Monheim Triennale II.