This initiative, part of the Braga 25 Portuguese Capital of Culture, takes place on Mount Falperra on 26 July, with free admission. William Basinski, Ghosted, Maria W Horn, Sonoscopia and Clothilde are among the more than a dozen and a half proposals on the programme.
Between sunrise on 26 July and dawn on 27 July, the Extremo festival offers a 20-hour journey of sound exploration on the fountain between Braga and Guimarães, on the Falperra hill. Concerts, site-specific installations, performances, workshops and guided tours make up the programme, which is part of Braga 25 Portuguese Capital of Culture.
O Extremo is a journey guided by the sun, like a pilgrimage between the Sacromontes on the border between Guimarães and Braga. It starts at 6am on 26 July with a performance-manifesto by Braga-based musician Cody XV, with set design by Diogo Mendes and curated by the Braga collective Estudo do Meio.
This is followed by the concert Dies Irae, by Maria W Horn, in the chapel of Santa Marta das Cortiças, presented in an unprecedented format, with four Portuguese singers: Mariana Caldeira Pinto, Maria João Vieira Leite, Mariana Vital and Maria Bustorff.
The opening moment of the festival is reserved for 50 people – registrations are already sold out – who will then be invited for a walk (from 8am) up the Falperra hill, during which they will come across the site-specific performances of the Porto collective Berru and the sound artist and researcher Cláudia Martinho.
At the end of the route, next to the chapel of Santa Marta do Leão, the public will be able to attend concerts by multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Alexandre Centeio (11.30am) and Gordan (12.30pm), a trio that proposes a fusion of traditional Balkan voices (by the historical Svetlana Spajic) with feedback and electronically generated sounds by Guido Möbius and Andi Stecher.
The morning ends with the activation of Sistema Sonoar, a multidisciplinary project by the Sonoscopia collective (on show from 1pm to 9pm), whose epicentre is an automatic pipe organ installed in the chapel of Santo António.
The Sonoscopia piece will be the stage for one of the three workshops – also already sold out – at Extremo, which include an artisan bread workshop by the Mãe na Massa bakery and a natural pigments workshop by the Cave collective, as well as a guided tour of the Falperra complex by art historian Eduardo Pires de Oliveira.
The Extremo programme also includes a Concert for Blindfolded Eyes by Luís Antero (6pm), a unique sensory experience that will take place in Falperra’s iconic chapel of Santa Maria Madalena, based on an artistic residency focusing on the territory’s heritage.
Clothilde (7.30pm), a composer who has also been in residence in the area, presents her new live device in Braga, in a concert that will also take place in the chapel of Santa Maria Madalena, in anticipation of the sunset.
In the evening, Ghosted (22h00), one of the most transcendent collaborations in music today, with three key figures in exploratory music: Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin; and William Basinski (23h15), a mythical American musician and one of the most acclaimed names in ambient electronic music of our century, take to the stage next to the chapel of Santa Marta do Leão.
Extremo closes with a Live Act by M3STR, an emerging producer and DJ from Porto, curated by the independent electronic music artistic community, Dark Sessions, born in Braga.
Extremo is part of the Braga 25 Portuguese Capital of Culture programme. The Municipality of Guimarães is also collaborating in the organisation, which also has the Irmandade da Falperra, the Parish of S. Tiago de Esporões and the parish councils of Longos (Guimarães), Esporões (Braga) and União de Freguesias de Nogueira, Fraião e Lamaçães as partners. The festival is produced and curated by Capivara Azul – Associação Cultural.