An art festival dedicated to experimental music and sound poetics, Novas Frequências celebrates 15 years of activity and — even without funding or sponsors — arrives in São Paulo for the first time. One of the most influential events in Latin America, the Rio-based festival, founded in 2011, presents a program of 28 acts, bringing together renowned names and emerging voices from the contemporary scene. Highlights include Kara-Lis Coverdale, Sarah Davachi, and Concepción Huerta, representatives of a generation that has expanded the boundaries of ambient music and electroacoustic composition. Wolf Eyes, the North American noise legend, returns to Brazil after 11 years, reaffirming distortion and chaos as vital aesthetic practices. Novas Frequências also offers a space for the most intense branches of rock: the collaboration between Test & Deafkids, Japan’s Birushanah, and the Brazilian band Papangu brings heaviness and experimentation to new territories, while Metá Metá renews its fusion of ancestral energy and contemporary invention. In the realm of electronic music and hybrid performances, the festival embraces wide-ranging dialogues: the Lebanese-Swiss duo Praed presents their psychedelic Arab techno; the Aymara siblings Los Thuthanaka merge Andean pulses and digital experimentation; and Ugandan artist Faizal Mostrixx brings his radical vision of contemporary club sound. The program also features a sound installation by Craca and a photography exhibition by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko and Ivan Nishitani documenting the independent party scenes of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Founded in 2011 in Rio de Janeiro, Novas Frequências is an international festival that promotes experimental music, avant-garde, and sound art, seeking to renew the relationship between art, the city, and the local ecosystem. Over the years, it has occupied a variety of venues — concert halls, art institutions, public spaces, and unconventional sites such as churches, warehouses, schools, beaches, and waterfalls. More than a traditional festival, NF proposes a 360º relationship with sound, encompassing performances, installations, parties, commissioned works, site-specific projects, talks, workshops, courses, artistic residencies, and sound walks.

In its 15th edition, Novas Frequências presents its most international lineup since 2019, marking a vigorous return to the transnational exchanges that have always defined its identity. The lineup reflects the wide range of languages and perspectives the festival embraces — from introspection to catharsis, from timbral research to bodily expression — and unfolds across two capitals: in Rio de Janeiro, from December 3 to 7, at Garage Grindhouse, Solar Grandjean de Montigny (PUC-Rio Museum), Casa Firjan, Solar de Botafogo, Trauma, Parque Lage, and Circo Voador; and in São Paulo, from December 8 to 13, at Teatro Cultura Artística, SESC Avenida Paulista, and Central Técnica Chico Giacchieri.

Two events serve as warm-ups for the festival. Starting October 23, a new sound installation by Craca will be presented at the 8th edition of the Futuros Possíveis conference, at Casa Firjan in Rio de Janeiro. On display until December 7, the piece — a partnership between the institution and the festival — proposes an aesthetic and sensory investigation into how we can still imagine desirable futures, setting the tone for the spirit of Novas Frequências. Another highlight is the photo exhibition "No Raiar da Noite" (“At the Break of Night”), mapping ten years of the independent electronic music party scenes in Rio and São Paulo. Featuring images by Ivi Maiga Bugrimenko and Ivan Nishitani, the show opens on November 14 at Solar Grandjean de Montigny (PUC-Rio) and runs until December 7.

This year’s edition of Novas Frequências takes place without any form of funding or sponsorship. The entire operation is made possible thanks to the support of partner institutions hosting the festival and the generous collaboration of participating artists, who have agreed to smaller fees than usual. In this context, public participation — through ticket purchases and consumption during the event — becomes essential to ensure the continuity and vitality of the project.

On this matter, festival director and curator Chico Dub reflects:

“Post-pandemic, the space for the new and the experimental has been shrinking dramatically within the culture of numbers. We live in a time when only what is massive seems to have value, and everything related to smaller audiences — such as niche festivals and independent scenes — starts being treated as irrelevant. It’s quite frustrating to celebrate 15 years without meaningful support, but I still believe that betting on this kind of practice — especially in a plasticized world saturated with formulas and bland simulacra generated by artificial intelligence — has never been more urgent. Novas Frequências reaches this milestone reaffirming the importance of cultivating risk, invention, and the new as conditions for the future.”