Day ticket: Standard £40 // Solidarity £52
Advance booking required
Our Solidarity ticket price is an opportunity for audiences to support our work by purchasing a ticket at a slightly higher price (the cost of a Standard ticket plus 30%). Read more about Solidarity prices here.
Running from 2025 to 2027, XN (X perimental N counters) brings together two of Europe’s leading experimental music festivals in a six-part international exchange. Across three years, every edition of each festival will feature curated performances, creative workshops, and open calls, creating space for artists from the UK and Germany to connect, collaborate, and challenge the boundaries of contemporary sound.
Following its inaugural edition at Moers Festival in June, this day-long programme at hcmf// 2025 marks part two of XN’s journey of musical exploration, cultural exchange, and creative risk-taking, featuring a panel discussion with Artistic Directors Graham McKenzie and Tim Isfort discussing the motivations and vision behind the exchange alongside innovative solo, duo, trio and quintet performances.
1pm, St Paul’s Hall: Stefan Schultze
In Hyperplexia, visionary composer and pianist Stefan Schultze rips up the rulebook and reimagines the piano for the 21st century. Receiving its UK Premiere, this bold, high-concept performance is a dazzling exploration of the piano’s outer limits. This is not just a concert – it’s a sonic experiment, a high-stakes improvisation, and a wild hybrid of acoustic mastery and futuristic tech. Schultze invites you to witness the piano like you’ve never heard (or seen) it before.
5pm, Huddersfield Town Hall: Evi Filippou + Robert Lucaciu / Akiko Ahrendt, Annie Bloch + Emily Wittbrodt
Greek vibraphonist Evi Filippou and German-Romanian double bassist Robert Lucaciu bring a fearless duo project that defies categorisation; a dynamic meeting of minds where structure meets spontaneity, and folk meets the avant-garde. Rooted in jazz, contemporary classical and Balkan folk traditions, their collaboration is a vivid exchange of contrasts: clarity and grit, rhythm and resonance, delicacy and drive. Together, they weave a richly textured sound world that shifts effortlessly between composed form and free improvisation – a music of conversation, intuition, and bold creative risk.
Three singular voices from Germany’s experimental music scene – violinist Akiko Ahrendt, organist Annie Bloch, and cellist Emily Wittbrodt — come together for their first performance as a trio, drawing on their shared history (they have previously collaborated in various projects and formations) to explore the points of friction and harmony between their instruments. This is music made through deep listening and mutual transformation: a space where boundaries blur and traditions dissolve, allowing a complex conversation between the three instruments to emerge.
9pm, Huddersfield Town Hall: Carolin Pook, Adam Denton, Alexander Painter, Gloria Yehilevsky + Jui Ying Huang
Led by composer, conductor and violinist Carolin Pook, a quintet performance will showcase the culmination of a collaborative workshop with four fearless UK musicians selected via open call. Over three intensive days, they will co-create a new suite or series of pieces shaped by their individual backgrounds, musical voices and improvisational instincts. Each player brings something different: a personal style, a lived perspective, a way of thinking about sound. Through structured exercises and group conduction, Pook helps forge those differences into a unified ensemble identity – one rooted in mutual exchange and creative trust.
Aiming to champion new and underrepresented voices in experimental sound and create new international platforms for innovation, XN is a space for bold ideas, sonic risk, and artistic connection. Join us as we explore the edges of sound.
Please note: Tickets for individual events will be available at a later date – sign up to our newsletter for updates. Day tickets do not guarantee entry to the panel discussion, which has limited capacity and is part of our free events programme. Entry to this event will be on a first come, first served basis.
Curated by Tim Isfort (Festival Director, Moers Festival) and produced by hcmf//
XN is funded by the Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten mbH (GVL) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) with the support of Goethe-Institut London