15. STIO Festival - About

15. STIO Festival, 3 - 5 April 2025

with 'ALPENGLOW 9 – Styria meets Serbia' and 'ALPENGLOW 10 – Styria meets Bremen'

At the 15th STIO Festival in Graz, audiences can look forward to a multilateral meeting: two international cultural exchanges.

The exchange with Serbia already began with the match on October 25 and 26, 2024, in Novi Sad. Now, the retourmatch will take place as part of the STIO Festival 2025 in Graz.

The exchange with Bremen follows the opposite order: The retourmatch will be held first during the 2025 festival in Graz, while the match is scheduled for autumn 2026 in Bremen.

stio festival & Styrian Association for New and Improvised Music

In 2023, the V:NM Festival became the STIO Festival and thus the successor and continuation of the previous 13 V:NM Festivals. Over the years, the V:NM's activities, which were originally focused on Austria, increasingly concentrated on the Styrian scene and Graz became the center of the association's activities. In order to present this development clearly and represent it more strongly to the outside world, it was sensible and necessary to establish a new association (STANIM - Styrian Association for New and Improvised Music) with the following objectives and focal points:

• Styria moves to the center of our activities.
• The Styrian Improvisers Orchestra (STIO) becomes the linchpin of the association and its activities.
• The V:NM Festival becomes the STIO Festival and thus the successor and continuation of the previous 13 V:NM Festivals.
• The "Alpenglow" cultural exchanges will be continued, expanded or draw on our good contacts from previous cultural exchanges. The focus here is on the Eastern European region.
• We are creating a new pool of musicians with a connection to Styria.
• We will reduce the number of festival participants and highlight the Styrian scene instead.
• We will increasingly address and integrate the young scene in Styria.