The SONDA Festival was born out of pure enthusiasm. It all started with a rather random encounter between an avid music nerd with no musical education (Jan Lichý) on the one hand and an established artist with rich professional experience and academic background (Jiří Y Suchánek) on the other. The synergy of this encounter gave birth to the idea of organizing a progressive interdisciplinary showcase that seeks to broaden horizons, entertain, connect, and push boundaries, and which aspires to make a great addition to the local cultural scene.

The theme of the second edition of the festival is intergrowth – a term that refers to the festival’s attempt to blur the line between aesthetic approaches in electronic music. The (not only) Czech experimental scene is characterised by the separation of an academic sphere of electroacoustic composition and live, let's say post-club electronics. Promoters and music curators tend to present both genres separately and target different audiences. This is understandable, but not strictly necessary. Sound patterns and compositional practices overlap between the two genres, and both domains have great potential to influence and enrich each other. Therefore, we want to make this boundary at least a little more permeable and offer the audience an inspiring listening experience that will help them to understand diverse creative approaches and aesthetic models – both those that are listener-friendly and those that require more focused attention.

The second edition of the festival will bring a varied sound palette. Same as last year, sound and audiovisual performances will take place at the observatory. The lineup will feature Richard Skelton, a polymath and the icon of the British experimental scene whose urgent drones enhanced by the planetarium architecture promise an intense immersive experience. Hungarian producer Roland Nagy aka Fausto Mercier will bring his own version a deconstructed post-club sound accompanied by regular and full-dome visuals, while Serbian artist and composer Svetlana Maraš will offer a completely opposite concept, immersing the audience in her unique world of electroacoustic music with visual features stripped to a minimum. The UK based duo Church Andrews & Matt Davies will serve a portion of dense rhythmic synthesis augmented by live percussion and audio reactive visuals and finally American composer and performer Douglas McCausland will present his brand new 4 channel AV show Entanglement in which he controls audio and visual layers by means of a self-made sensory glove.  The visual content of the festival is currently being tailored by local talents who meet to discuss their ideas and cooperate as part of TRYCHTÝŘproject.

Second edition of the festival will bring a new venue featuring a truly unique site-specific programme. One week before the Saturday gigs at the observatory Water Tanks under Žlutý kopec (vodojemy na Žlutém kopci) will host The Virtual Vienna Acousmonium – a series of 10 concerts of spatial music for 26 loudspeakers and 20 headphones composed and arranged by composers of acousmatic music Thomas Gorbach(Austria) and Enrique Mendoza(Mexico).