From October 10th to 12th, 2025, the Southern Italian avantgarde music boutique festival returns with its fifth new edition featuring concerts, hiking, capacity-building activities and artist residencies.
The festival continues to grow and promote social justice and active citizenship through music. This year, it confirms the collaboration with Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati and Forum Austriaco di Cultura Roma, and the partnership with Greenfield Festival Foundation and Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza. It is also proud to announce new international collaborations with Swiss record label Hallow Ground, Swiss organization soundscapes.live and UK magazine The Wire Magazine.
AVANT returns with its fifth edition, running from 10-12th October 2025 in Lecce, South Italy. AVANT is a boutique festival created with the aim of celebrating social & environmental justice through concerts, coastal trekking, capacity-building programmes, and visits to the natural and architectural treasures of South Italy.
The event is organized by Sud Sonico, a non-profit association that uses music as a tool for positive social impact and change. This year’s concept is “Soundwave of Solidarity“, a sonic exploration of the power of sound and noise as tools of protest, healing, and transformation. Inspired by the book “Bodies of Sound” (Irene Revell & Sarah Shin), and in particular by the contribution of Palestinian music manager, researcher and activist Christina Hazboun, the 2025 edition investigates how soundwaves can act as a force of resistance – amplifying stories, pain, and hope in the face of oppression. Drawing from the Palestinian struggle and beyond, AVANT continues to champion collective action and artistic expression as radical acts, where sound becomes a medium to listen, feel, and resist through vibrations and frequencies.
On Friday, October 10, 2025, at Officine Culturali Ergot in Lecce, AVANT presents “ODE TO FREEDOM”. The event features two dramatizations of books focused on the theme of citizenship rights, with soundscapes and performances by long-time vinyl collector and DJ Max Nocco, and local actors Massimo Colazzo and Simone Franco. The program of the festival’s launch event will continue to expand.
On Saturday, October 11th, the festival continues in the natural area of the Roca Vecchia and Torre dell’Orso Adriatic sea coasts, to discover the history of the ancient settlements and caves of Roca Vecchia and Grotta della Poesia. In the evening, the festival moves to Masseria Tagliatelle for its “MAIN EVENT”, featuring live performances by Iranian experimental producer Rojin Sharafi, Swiss composer Martina Lussi and Italian sound artist Nicola Di Croce. The evening will also present the eco-sonic artifacts created by the students attending the MEGA – Music Efforts for Green Activism training course, and a live performance by the ensemble of artists participating within the Street Ballads Italia artistic residency.
On Sunday, October 12th, the final day concludes with another hiking experience at the Rupi di San Mauro and Montagna Spaccata, one of the most suggestive areas of Salento’s Ionian seacoast. The festival ends with the “GRAND FINALE”, an organ improvisation concert by French composer Delphine Dora at the beautiful church Basilica of San Giovanni Battista al Rosario.
The fifth edition’s rich programme is also possible thanks to new international collaborations through MEGA – Music Efforts for Green Activism and the Street Ballads Italia projects.
MEGA is an awareness & capacity-building platform dedicated to share knowledge on the design of contemporary music-ecological projects. The project aims to support artists, students, project managers, and event organizers in using music as a tool for environmental activism. Among the activities, the project presents an artistic-professional residency from 6th to 10th of October at KORA – Contemporary Arts Center. The participants will be invited to learn and produce creative ecology artefacts to be premiered on October 11th at AVANT Festival’s Main Event. On the same day, AVANT will also present the sound-literary artwork developed as part of the Street Ballads Italia artistic residency running at Noise Creative Studio in Botrugno (Lecce). In this project, five artists interpret texts written specifically for this project by both local and international authors, including Fabiano Alborghetti, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Zora del Buono, Andrea Donaera, Begoña Feijoo Fariña, Doris Femminis, Michele Mari, Andrea Martina, Carmen Nolasco e Marko Miladinović. The texts are transformed into a sound performance by an ensemble composed of: Italian producer Daniele Carcassi, Italian songwriter and sound engineer Matilde Davoli, Italian multidisciplinary artist and writer Caterina Dufì, and the radio collective Tosunian with Filippo Caniato and Marco Saracino.
AVANT Festival is a project conceived and produced by Sud Sonico APS, thanks to the collaboration of numerous partners, including: Italian-French’ Fondation Nuovi Mecenati, the Swiss’ Greenfield Festival Foundation, the Italian’ Fondazione Italia Patria Bellezza, the UK-based experimental music magazine The Wire Magazine, Swiss record label Hallow Ground, Swedish organization Musichelp, the Austrian’ Forum Austriaco di Cultura Roma – supporting the festival for the fifth consecutive year – and last but not least, local partners Officine Culturali Ergot, 18 Meridiano Escursioni, Binario9, Ramdom and Noise Creative Studio and Masseria Tagliatelle.
AVANT Festival
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