Music to Our Ears: FMT Festival

The FMT Society (Föreningen Musikspektra T) is a non-profit organization based in Sweden whose mission is to support innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together in a dynamic international community. Since its foundation in 2002, it has featured international figures of music and art including Bence Pintér, Makin Fung Bing Fai, Saki Matsumoto, Soňa Vetchá, Barry Wan, Fabrizio Rossi, Daniel Chudovský, Simon Berggården, Sergio Camacho, Loretta Lau, Anders Flodin, and Emelie Sjöström- among others.

The richness of curiosity and its power to stimulate creative thinking served as the initial impetus for the founding of the FMT Society. Today, this tradition lives on, transformed by the dynamism of the constantly evolving community.

Barry Wan gave some insight into this upcoming festival and how he found himself involved:
This year’s FMT festival – Elements, is now scheduled to take place live! This once self-evident, intrinsic aspect, the liveness of performance, now gives us cause for rejoicing, coming as almost redemptive news. After a shutdown of cultural venues overall that lasted for several months due to the pandemic, we are hopeful that this festival will bring us together again, emphatically reminding us of all the things we were deprived of last year: the joy of human contact and the unique effect of Art – live Art – on our lives.

We are going to present works by artists from Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the USA, Spain, Azerbaijan, and Sweden. The program encompasses works with a very distinctive artistic brand and a wide range of styles, including over 11 World premieres. After a cultural dry spell that lasted for almost a year and a half, both our responsibility and appetite are huge – it is high time this dialogue opened again. Our artistic program cannot be pigeonholed into strictly defined themes and theoretical frameworks. That being said, several of our works of art are, in fact, built around one certain recurring theme: The Four Elements.

How did you get involved with the FMT Festival?
In 2015, I met prof. Anders Flodin, the founder of Föreningen Musikspektra T( FMT)  in  the international music festival Orfeus 2015 in Slovakia. He is a very influential, knowledgeable, and sympathetic musician. Later on, he invited me to the FMT festival in Öbrebo, Sweden in 2016 after which, I joined FMT and became an active member. I was lucky enough to become the president in 2019. Since then, the crew and I started to organize FMT festivals once or twice a year.

How did you get involved with NGO DEI?
In 2019, I met one of the NGO DEI founders, Loretta Lau, accidentally while she was performing at the art festival POKOJE in Prague as I overheard someone speaking my language (Cantonese). Of course, I wanted to approach her and we became friends after a while. We have had a lot of corporations together and in 2021, the NFO DEI was established, it has become one of my favorite places to visit and meet people in Prague.

What upcoming projects are you involved in?
I have events happening throughout April and everyone is welcome to attend. am going to have another performance in Farmstudio, Vysoka with prof. Anders Flodin and percussionist Emelie Sjöström on 6th of April.  On the 9th of April, I will have a performance in Nostalgicka Myš Šemanovice. Lastly for April, 19th of April. My audiovisual group, AUXIG, are playing in Pragovka on the 19th of April.