Text by CLOT Magazine
SEMIBREVE, the Portuguese festival taking place in the city of Braga, is celebrating its 15th edition from 23-26 October 2025 with a programme that spans collaborative projects, sound art, audiovisual performances, installations, clubbing experiences, workshops, and artist talks set across a range of venues in Braga such as the iconic Theatro Circo, the contemporary arts centre gnration, and the atmospheric Capela Imaculada chapel. Highlights for this edition include Actress and Suzanne Ciani, Lucy Railton with Rebecca Salvadori and Charlie Hope, Rafael Toral, Grand River, aya, Marta De Pascalis and Marco Ciceri, and emptyset. The festival will also feature the Edigma Semibreve Scholar, a selection of works from art and technology academies.
The festival kicks off on Thursday, 23, at Basilica dos Congregados with electronic music composer Heinali and singer Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko performing Гільдеґарда (‘Hildegard’ in Ukrainian). This performance, as they explain, combines the vocal sound production approaches of authentic Ukrainian folk singing with the modular synthesis techniques drawing from high medieval polyphony and monophony.
On Friday, 24, we’ll not miss Rafael Toral and Marta De Pascalis performing with Marco Ciceri at Theatro Circo and aya at gnration. Rafael Toral pioneered in the 1990s a new form of electronic music that draws equally from rock, jazz, ambient and minimalism. Toral will present Traveling Light, a new piece set to premiere at the Venice Biennale this year. Yaw Tembe, Rodrigo Amado, Bruno Parrinha, and Clara Saleiro, with lighting scenography by Marcel Weber/MFO, will join Toral on stage. Marta De Pascalis and media artist Marco Ciceri will perform Pascalis’s new album Tell Me the Sun, a solo work that employs analogue and FM synthesis alongside a tape-loop system. Later we’ll get to gnration to seeaya performing hexed!, an album that confronts the desperation and dysfunction of addiction.
Our Saturday 25 highlights are emptyset and Lucy Railton with Rebecca Salvadori and Charlie Hope performing at Theatro Circo, and µ-Ziq & ID:Mora at gnration. Not A Word From Me, commissioned by SEMIBREVE, CTM, DE SINGEL and FIBER, is a new live show that brings together the work of cellist and electronic musician Lucy Railton, who is accompanied by video artist and filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori and visual artist Charlie Hope. Not A Word From Me delves into an experience of sensorial exploration, immersing the listener in the visceral and psychoacoustic states of Railton’s sonic work.
emptyset, after their performance in 2012, are back to SEMIBREVE with Dissever, a new album which continues their ongoing exploration of the histories of electronic sound and media across the 20th century. Lastly, Mike Paradinas, best known under the alias μ-Ziq and ID:MORA, a visual artist and self-taught creator known for his immersive and detailed visual language, will present Grush Paradinas’ latest album.
Closing the festival on Sunday, 26, we’ll see Concrète Waves, a new performance commissioned by Sónar and The Barbican (London), that brings together Actress (Darren J Cunningham) and Suzanne Ciani. Both artists are sonic world-builders. Cunningham’s self-styled ‘r&b concrète’ is influenced by Detroit techno, and Ciani’s pioneering work with the Buchla synthesiser is fluid and organic. Another performance not to be missed is by Aimée Portioli, a.k.a. Grand River, who returns to SEMIBREVE with Tuning the Wind, a composition in which the wind itself becomes a prepared instrument. In this extended piece, Aimée seamlessly merges nature and music, blending synthesisers and wind recordings so that they become indistinguishable, uniting natural sounds with human-made instruments. The organisers explain.
To round off the lineup, other names performing this year include NAH, Zancudo Berraco, and João Galante on Friday; Ava Rasti, Nazar, Lyra Pramuk, and Violet on Saturday; and Yara Asmar on Sunday.
The EDIGMA SEMIBREVE AWARD, the festival’s annual prize celebrating and promoting the creation of works that explore interactivity, sound, and image through the use of digital technologies, also returns this year. The winning work will be announced shortly and exhibited during the 2025 edition of the festival, joining previous awardees such as Hidden Edges (2024), DMSTFCTN (2023), and Studio Animaspace & Arina Kapitanova (2022).
SEMIBREVE’s reputation stems from carefully curated programming and a strong commitment to community and inclusion, fostering and supporting artists who challenge conventions. Building on this foundation, the festival once again invites audiences to listen, connect, and imagine what lies just beyond sound, digital art and co-creation.
Find tickets here.
