All Dates
Location
About
TOPOS 2026
Music Festival
September 2–5, 2026
EMPAC / Sanctuary for Independent Media
Schedule:
- Wednesday — Be the Media! 5PM
- Wednesday — Black Atlas 7PM
- Thursday — The Strangeness of Jazz 6PM
- Thursday — そして花びらは燃え、散りゆく / And The Petals Burst Into Flames... 9PM
- Friday — Defiant Life 7PM
- Friday — Paris Syndrome 9PM
- Saturday — Community BBQ NOON
- Saturday — Improv Spaces presents Rock City Falls Trio and Sun Dogs 2PM
- Saturday — The Strangeness of Drumming 4PM
- Saturday — Festival Reception 5PM
- Saturday — A Page of Madness 7PM
What does music know about us that we don't yet know about ourselves? It shapes the rhythm of our days, bends our perspectives, and gives form to the stories we carry. The rituals we return to, both ordinary and transcendent, pulse with the emotional frequency of sound. At a moment when the world feels especially lonely and fractured, gathering together to listen intently may be one of the most radical acts available to us.
Featuring Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith, Miho Hatori, Edward George, Paul Abbott, IMA, Rock City Falls Trio (Improv Spaces), Sun Dogs (Improv Spaces), Fred Moten, and The Silent Light—TOPOS 2026 brings together different forms of music, not as genres but as provocative sites of experience.
Every presentation is a way into our own stories and of those around us, asking: do these stories have the potential to help us collectively reimagine new, and perhaps better, possible futures?