Sacrum Profanum Festival

The Sacrum Profanum Festival was established in 2003 in cooperation with the Krakow 2000 Festival Office, the Krakow Philharmonic and the Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne label. Initially, the festival combined secular and sacral music of the 18th and 19th centuries, performing it both in the philharmonic hall and in the rolling mill hall of the Sendzimir Steelworks, where great performances took place, including Carmina Burana, Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein. Since the third edition, the festival has focused on presenting 19th- and 20th-century music according to a national key. Subsequent editions presented Russian (2005), French (2006), American (2007), German (2008), British (2009), Nordic (2010), American again (2011) and Polish (2012) music in grandmaster performances by the best ensembles specialising in contemporary music, including Kronos Quartet, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, musikFabrik, Asko|Schönberg and Ensemble InterContemporain. 

Filip Berkowicz has been the artistic director of the festival since 2008. Since that time, the festival has presented contemporary music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 2011, a lot of space in the programme has been devoted to the presentation of American music, including minimalism. Another trend was to present contemporary music by classical composers, reinterpreted or remixed by young alternative music artists, mainly jazz and electronica. 

In 2016, the festival was curated by Krzysztof Pietraszewski, who proposed expanding the festival both formally and in terms of its programme. Apart from concerts, the Sacrum Profanum formula opened up to other arts: opera, exhibitions and audio art installations, as well as ballet in the future, but also meetings, discussions and workshops supplementing the main themes. Stylistically, the programme creates an alchemical mixture of three trends: from 20th century contemporary music, through avant-garde, to indie classical.