Influence is a resonance— sometimes audible, sometimes ghostlike—passing between bodies, disciplines, and ideas. In these realms, sound is a coalescence of past and present affected by who listens, who remembers, and who responds.

This season’s Sound Atlas Festival gathers sound as a living geography—charted not by borders, but by forces that shape how music is imagined, made, and shared. We are thrilled to present season IV Realms of Influence, with our ears fixed on the currents that move through contemporary creation: lineage and rupture, place and displacement, technology and touch. Across three days, the festival becomes a meeting ground where composers, performers, and listeners step into overlapping worlds, each shaped by distinct gravitational pulls and soundscapes rooted in modern composition, sound design, and inspiring performances of chamber music.

With this year’s featured composer, Kevin Day, the artist lineup reflects influence not as hierarchy, but as conversation. Established voices share space with emerging ones; acoustic ritual collides with digital speculation; local histories resonate alongside global idioms. Some works trace their power back to mentors, and traditions, while others are shaped by machines, networks, and the altered acoustics of modern life.

The Sound Atlas New Music Festival invites audiences to wander through these zones of exchange, where music reveals the invisible forces acting upon it—and upon us. Here, influence is not something we escape, but something we inhabit, reshape, and send forward, carrying its echoes into new terrain.

Join us June 26-28 2026 at Contemporary Calgary for Realms of Influence.