Festival Internacional Cuyo Contemporáneo - FICC

Main entrance at Teatro del Bicentenario, San Juan, Argentina

In 2024 and 2025 I had the pleasure of taking part in FICC — Festival Cuyo Contemporáneo in San Juan, Argentina, a festival dedicated to contemporary music, sound creation, and the diffusion of new artistic practices in the Cuyo region.

Across these two editions, my participation brought together several aspects of my work: musical direction, sound direction, sound projection, artistic collaboration, coaching, lectures, and performance practice around the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was a meaningful return to Argentina through a repertoire that has shaped a large part of my musical life in Europe.

FICC has become an important meeting point for contemporary music in San Juan. Its programme brings together local, national, and international artists through concerts, lectures, educational activities, and collaborations with institutions such as the Teatro del Bicentenario and the Universidad Nacional de San Juan. The festival creates a space for music that is often absent from conventional concert programming, especially contemporary, experimental, and avant-garde repertoire.

2024: Stockhausen’s electronic music in quadraphonic space

My first participation in FICC was in the 2024 edition, with a programme centred on the electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. At the Teatro del Bicentenario, the festival presented, for the first time in Latin America, three major electronic works by Stockhausen in their original quadraphonic format: GESANG DER JÜNGLINGE, TELEMUSIK, and KONTAKTE.

My work focused on the sound projection and spatial realization of these pieces. This is not simply a technical task. In Stockhausen’s electronic music, space is part of the composition itself. The movement of sound, the relationship between loudspeakers, the position of the audience, and the acoustic response of the hall all become part of the musical form.

Presenting this repertoire in San Juan was a special experience. These works are often known through recordings, but a stereo reduction cannot fully represent what Stockhausen imagined. In quadraphonic performance, the music becomes physical and architectural. Sound surrounds the audience, travels through the hall, and reveals dimensions of the pieces that are otherwise hidden.

For me, this 2024 edition was also a way of bringing together different parts of my artistic history: my long engagement with Stockhausen’s music, my work as a sound projectionist in Europe, and my connection to Argentina.

2025: HARLEKIN, AVE, TANZE LUZEFA! and the stage as musical space

In 2025, I returned to FICC for a broader and more integrated project. This edition included performances with Roberta Gottardi, clarinetist and basset horn player, and a programme built around Stockhausen’s instrumental, theatrical, and electronic imagination.

The programme included HARLEKIN, TANZE LUZEFA!, GESANG DER JÜNGLINGE, KONTAKTE, and sections of AVE, with Roberta Gottardi performing on clarinet and basset horn. My role expanded beyond sound projection into musical direction, sound direction, and the coordination of the musical and spatial aspects of the performances.

This repertoire requires a particular kind of performer. In works such as HARLEKIN and AVE, the musician is not only an instrumentalist, but also a moving, theatrical, spatial presence. Gesture, directionality, character, timing, and sound are inseparable. The stage becomes a musical surface, and the performer becomes a point of articulation between body, space, and sound.

Working with Roberta Gottardi in this context was especially rewarding. Her experience with Stockhausen’s music, her physical command of the instrument, and her understanding of the theatrical dimension of the repertoire made the project both precise and alive. The 2025 performances allowed the audience to encounter Stockhausen not only as a composer of electronic music, but as an artist who imagined a complete musical theatre of sound, space, movement, and ritual.

A bridge between Europe, Argentina, and Cuyo

What made both editions especially meaningful for me was the possibility of creating a bridge between different musical worlds.

Much of my work with Stockhausen’s music has taken place in Europe, through concerts, sound projection, and my involvement with the Stockhausen-Kurse in Kürten. Bringing that experience to San Juan, and sharing it within the context of FICC, gave the project another dimension. It was not simply a matter of presenting an international repertoire abroad, but of opening a dialogue with a local artistic community, students, musicians, institutions, and audiences.

FICC is important because it does not treat contemporary music as an isolated specialty. It creates a context around it. It offers concerts, but also conversations. It invites international artists, but also gives visibility to local creation. It presents demanding repertoire, but also builds entry points for listeners who may be encountering this music for the first time.

In that sense, my participation in 2024 and 2025 was not only about Stockhausen, or about my own work as a musical and sound director. It was also about contributing to a space where contemporary music can continue to grow in Argentina, and specifically in the region of Cuyo.

Looking ahead, the 2026 edition of FICC is already taking shape as a continuation and expansion of this work. The programme will present further works from Stockhausen’s catalogue, including two South American premieres, deepening the festival’s commitment to bringing rarely performed repertoire to audiences in Argentina and the region. After the 2024 and 2025 editions, this next step feels like part of a longer artistic process: building not just isolated performances, but a sustained context for listening, studying, and experiencing spatial, theatrical, and electronic music in Cuyo.

I am grateful to Marcelo González, the FICC team, Roberta Gottardi, the Teatro del Bicentenario, the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, and everyone involved in making these editions possible.

FICC has become a vital platform for contemporary music in San Juan. I hope it continues to grow as a meeting place for artists, students, and audiences interested in new ways of listening.