FACT is very pleased to be media partnering the 2011 Unsound New York festival, tickets for which are on sale now.

A companion to the main Unsound festival, which was founded in 2003 and continues to take place each year in Krakow, Poland, the curatorial approach is similarly ambitious and discerning, with a clear commitment to showcasing challenging and forward-thinking artists. Produced in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goether-Institute New York, Unsound NY 2011 is already shaping up to be a fine event indeed.

Having just launched its official website, the festival opens on April 6 with a concert in the Alice Tully Hall of New York’s iconic Lincolen Center. At its heart is a performance of Ben Frost, Daniel Bjarnason and Sinfonietta Cracovia’s We Don’t Need Other Worlds. We Need Mirrors – Music for Solaris, a specially commissioned work which premiered at Unsound Krakow last year. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s existential sci-fi novel Solaris and Tarkovsky’s famous film adaptation, the work is accompanied by video manipulations from Nick Robertson and Brian Eno. Sinfonietta Cracovia will also perform works by Penderecki and Steve Reich.

The following night, in the Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium, pioneering composer Morton Subotnick will present a fresh take on his classic work Silver Apples Of The Moon, with visuals from Lillevan, and Uwe Schmidt AKA Atom™, one of electronic music’s most talented and prolific figures, will make his ludicrously long-overdue New York debut. Sinfonietta Cracovia return to play music by the late Górecki.

On Friday 8 April, the mighty Emeralds perform live at Le Poisson Rouge. They’ll be joined by Alan Howarth, the renowned horror soundtrack composer and John Carpenter collaborator, who will present his own film music as well as collaborating onstage with Emeralds, and Harald Grosskopf, the former Ash Ra Tempel member whose incredibly influential Synthesist album is soon to be reissued by RVNG Intl. In the evening the action moves to Brooklyn’s notorious Bunker club, with Lone, Appleblim, Dorian Concept, Badawi, Spatial and more. The Saturday line-up at Bunker is more house/techno in feel, with sets from KiNK, Petar Dundov, Jurek Przedziecki, Octave One, Tin Man and more.

The event draws to a close on Sunday 10 April with the New York live debut of dark ambient maestro Lustmord, supported by Void Ov Voices and Robert Piotrowicz.

In addition to all the music, there’ll be a number of other events, workshops and panel discussions held under the banner of Labs, with the focus on the idea of a “festival as a laboratory” for experimentation and collaboration. Meanwhile Unsound Festival New York Labs will focus on art and multimedia presentations from underground artists like Anna Zaradny, Taylor Dupree and Daniel Higgs, and ((audience)): Cinema for the Ear, a five-channel surround-sound program based around the theme of horror, with specially-commissioned works by Demdike Stare, Felix Kubin and Raime.

More information can be found here.