The A•DEvantgarde Festival was formed in the late 1980s by a passionate group of young German composers who wanted to break from the traditional or Darmstadt School of serial composition that was dominated by eminent new music composers of the late 20th century including Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Karlheinz Stockhausen and more.
The original founders, foremost among them Sandeep Bhagwati and Moritz Eggert, felt that they were already coming to an age where they should step aside and let the younger composers make many of the aesthetic decisions.
The group opted to use a democratic method whereby all members voted on which compositions to include and how best to direct the Festival, a process that was "laborious but always rewarding."
The centrepiece of the festival will be a 3-day 'Happening' in front of the Gasteig Centre for Arts and Culture in Munich on the theme 'An Artistic Occupy'.
Other features of the festival include a 'Quodlibet' with various choirs from the local scene, an evening of premieres of works setting the poetry of Ernst Toller (and associates), and concerts by Ensemble Nikel (Berlin/Tel Aviv) and NAMES (Salzburg).