During the week leading up to the festival, around 180 musicians from across the world come together to meet, experiment, and create new work or reimagine existing material in new formations. Many of these collaborations are fleeting: performances that premiere only once and may never happen again in the same form.
Over the weekend, audiences gather at Funkhaus for two days of performances shaped by this intensive period of exchange and creation. What you'll witness is music in its most immediate and unfiltered state: fragile, raw, collaborative, and alive. You will only find out who will play in a room when the stage lights turn on.
You may recognize familiar voices or discover artists you have never heard before, but above all, you'll realize that presence matters. PEOPLE is less about consuming performances and more about sharing unique musical moments together.
There will be roughly 200 premieres performed across the weekend. All artists will perform multiple times, in various groups across many shows.
Artists are not booked to participate, they make this festival. There are no fees, the ticket prices cover production costs. The gain is in the music and the experience and bonds that form.
In moments it might feel like you are stepping into a private recording session of your favourite artist, in other moments you find yourself in a space with 20 musicians and 20 different instruments creating an orchestral wall of melody.
The journey through the festival consists of your own personal schedule of performances, which guides you through the studios and stages — and the spaces that grow in between — where you move through Funkhaus on your own rhythm, following the sound.
There will be enough room to mingle, to feast and connect with others and digest what you just saw. Just to be ready in time for the next surprise around the corner.
PEOPLE wrote:
“…I could go on and on about all the amazing shows I've seen at PEOPLE, but in the end no words can make you feel what I felt, so I'll just leave it here and hope you got a slight idea about how beautiful this weekend was….” (full text) — indie.vidualist
“…You leave, exactly the same person who entered. But somehow more beautiful, somehow more ready, and somehow able to fly…”