Glasgow’s Sonica festival is heading into its final weekend with performances taking place in unexpected locations across the city.
The festival of audiovisual art, experimental music and immersive performance comes to an end on Sunday (4 October) after bringing more than 170 artists and musicians from 22 countries to Glasgow over 11 days.
Some of the city’s less conventional cultural spaces have been transformed for this year’s programme, with events taking place inside Pollok House, Govanhill Baths and Buchanan Galleries alongside established venues including Tramway.
One of the centrepieces has been The Listening House, which has taken over Pollok House while the 18th-century mansion remains closed for major refurbishment.
The building, which has been closed since 2023, has been filled with sound installations and performances spread across its rooms, gardens and three storeys.
Visitors have been able to encounter mechanical birds, hundreds of chiming bells and experimental sound installations while exploring parts of the house as Sonica temporarily transforms one of Glasgow’s best-known historic buildings.
Saturday’s programme at Pollok House includes a curated listening tour with Femke Dekker, an in-conversation event with pioneering electronic composer Suzanne Ciani and performances from Sonia Killmann, Lara Jones, Luka Liluashvili and Glasgow sound artist Mark Vernon.
Elsewhere, the Steamie at Govanhill Baths will host NYX Live on Saturday as the restored southside building becomes another of the festival’s temporary performance spaces.
The former swimming baths reopened following a major community-led restoration and Sonica is among the cultural events making use of the historic complex.
Tramway will host one of the weekend’s biggest performances on Saturday night when conductor Charles Hazlewood brings Paraorchestra to Glasgow for the Scottish premiere of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.
Paraorchestra, which brings together disabled and non-disabled musicians, will perform in a circle rather than using a conventional orchestral layout.
Audience members on the floor will be able to move around the musicians as they perform the minimalist work, effectively turning the orchestra itself into a sound installation. Main auditorium tickets have already sold out, with restricted-view balcony tickets being released.
Later on Saturday, Tramway hosts another double bill combining Scottish traditional music with experimental sound.
Harry Górski-Brown’s FISHER PRICE PIPES – AV combines small pipes and traditional Gaelic songs with electronic drone and live visuals.
It will be followed by Broken Vinyl from Mieko Suzuki and Claudia Rohrmoser, who deliberately work with warped, scratched and damaged records to create new electronic music from their glitches and imperfections.
Sonica will continue into Sunday with musician and composer Marie Delprat and video artist Tom Lane presenting the UK premiere of I Dreamt of Fire at Tramway.
The performance transforms the venue into a surreal waiting room where audience members take a number and wait as electronic music, surveillance screens and distorted visuals create an increasingly unsettling atmosphere.
The festival’s final day will also feature the Scottish debut of five-time Grammy-nominated electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani.
Ciani, who has worked with electronic music since the 1970s, will perform Improvisation on Four Sequences using the Buchla synthesiser with which she has become closely associated.
The performance traces different eras of electronic music, moving from early experimental sound towards contemporary dance music.
Sonica Glasgow, produced by Cryptic, began on 24 September and runs until Sunday 4 October.