Open Ears Festival of Music & Sound

Open Ears Festival of Music & Sound Challenge your ears! We're here to disrupt your conception of music.

June 4- June 7, 2026
📍Kitchener-Waterloo

…like a dream come true for musicians on the forward fringe of the art, and for people normally frightened of same. No more cloistering in concert halls; no preset definitions of what ‘real’ music is.
— Robert Everett-Green, The Globe and Mail

“capable of surprising you with a mix of contrasting styles and approaches … two hours and two blocks can span the corners of the globe and the moodiest of

moodswings.”dangermuffy.blogspot.com

This is the festival for people who play digital sticks and Halo, suspended electric guitars, turntables and accordions, jazz and violins and rainforests and pianos (and pianos that play themselves). This is the festival for an orchestra made of laptops and a regular one — no strings attached. This is the festival for groups to take very very old music which is Korean and make it very very new and still Korean and then blow your mind. This is the festival for legendary drone artists, Inuit throat singers, warped-out easy-listening deities and sample abusers and gamers who are secretly into ballet and a Quebecois street band that think they're from the 1930s. This is the festival for people who write and spin and hear and knit and draw and breathe and program and perform and steal sound. And this is the festival for you.

06/13/2026

👂Thank you for joining us last weekend for !

We experienced 10 performances, 3 workshops and a sound installation across Kitchener-Waterloo, featuring so many unique sounds and instruments and performers. Let’s give them another round of applause:

Peter Hatch
Duo Cichorium
The Happenstancers
Frank Horvat + Joann Whang
ANIMA
Found Sound Ensemble
Labyrinth Ontario Fragmented Forms
Leslie Ting
Kira Arts|Aly Keita
Kairos Percussion Quartet
taktus TorQ Percussion Quartet

👏With a special congratulations to Richard Burrows for 10 years as our Artistic Director! You definitely went for this milestone year, and we look forward to welcoming Amanda Smith for

💙Thank you for an incredible weekend! We cannot wait to share more moments from the festival.While we rest our feet (but...
06/09/2026

💙Thank you for an incredible weekend! We cannot wait to share more moments from the festival.

While we rest our feet (but never our ears), we would like to thank everyone who made Open Ears 2026 possible:

Canadian Heritage
Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada
Ontario Arts Council
City of Kitchener
City of Waterloo
Downtown Kitchener
Uptown Waterloo
Region of Waterloo
SOCAN Foundation - Fondation SOCAN
Perimeter Institute
Waterloo Region Community FoundationThe Musagetes Fund
Mohan Thomas

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
Church of the Good Shepherd
The Registry Theatre
Kitchener Public Library
Trillium Lutheran Church

The Open Ears board, tech team, staff, volunteers, and performers!

06/05/2026

Did this grab your attention span?

You have two more days to experience Peter Hatch’s time bending sound installation “Hours. Minutes. Seconds.” at

Saturday June 6th, 12-4:30pm
Sunday June 7th, 1-3pm

📍 Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery at 101 Queen St N
💵FREE!

Go to www.openears.ca to view the full festival schedule!

06/05/2026

This Sunday:

🎹 Canto Ostinato featuring and
⏰ June 7 @ 3 pm
📍 Kitchener City Hall Rotunda (200 King St W)
💵 FREE!

Celebrating it’s 50th anniversary Canto Ostinato by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt is one of the most quietly radical works of late-20th-century minimalism.

Written as a sequence of repeating musical cells, the piece unfolds through gentle harmonic shifts, pulsing rhythms, and luminous tonal clarity. Rather than prescribing a fixed form, ten Holt invites performers to shape the music in real time—deciding how often to repeat each section, when to move forward, and how to respond to one another. As a result, no two performances are ever the same.

Typically performed by multiple keyboard instruments—famed percussion ensembles Taktus Duo and TorQ Percussion are teaming up to reimagine this iconic work. Canto Ostinato creates a warm, enveloping sound world that encourages deep listening. Its steady ostinatos and consonant harmonies evoke a sense of suspension, allowing time to feel both expanded and intimate. The music resists drama in favor of gradual transformation, offering listeners space for contemplation and emotional resonance.

🌇🌄🌅

This performance is part of Open Ears Festival 2026, which takes place June 4-7, 2026.

This experimental sound festival brings a transformative sonic experience to the Kitchener-Waterloo region, designed for curious ears!

Go to www.openears.ca to view the full festival schedule and tickets.

TOMORROW: make a recession friendly instrument!In this instrument building workshop, Duo Cichorium will guide attendees ...
06/04/2026

TOMORROW: make a recession friendly instrument!

In this instrument building workshop, Duo Cichorium will guide attendees through the development of DIY instruments commonly used in their musical practice. This includes the (possible) creation of music box scrolls, windchimes, rattlers, and noise boxes.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a small collection of junk (cutlery, old keys, gamepieces) and will leave the workshop with a DIY noisemaker of some sort.

🚂 DIY Instruments and Noisemakers Workshop with
⏰ June 5 @ 6 pm
📍 Church of Good Shepherd at 116 Queen St N
💵FREE!

🗝️♟️🔔

This performance is part of Open Ears Festival 2026, which takes place June 4-7, 2026.

This experimental sound festival brings a transformative sonic experience to the Kitchener-Waterloo region, designed for curious ears!

Go to www.openears.ca to view the full festival schedule and purchase your festival pass.

Today is the day! Open Ears 2026 kicks off TODAY for four days of transformative sonic experiences in the Kitchener-Wate...
06/04/2026

Today is the day! Open Ears 2026 kicks off TODAY for four days of transformative sonic experiences in the Kitchener-Waterloo region:

👂 Duration of the festival: Hours. Minutes. Seconds. by Peter Hatch at
⬆️UPDATED TIMES: Thursday 2-4:30pm, Friday + Saturday 12-4:30pm, Sunday 1-3

👂Thursday, June 4:

6PM - Interactive Performance Workshop with at

8PM - Future Pastorale at

👂Friday, June 5:

6PM - DIY Instruments and Noisemakers Workshop with at

7:30PM - and Joann Whang Confined in Everyday Scenes at Theatre

9PM - & the Open Ears Festival co-present the world premiere of Mme Caeneus’s Canteen at

👂Saturday, June 6:

11AM - Found Sound Ensemble’s Serene Music at Victoria Park Lake

1PM - ’s Fragmented Forms at

3PM - .a.ting What Brings You In presented by OE Patron Mohan Thomas at

5PM - Nimba: the performative installation at Waterloo City Hall

6PM - Improv Workshop with at

8PM - at

👂Sunday, June 7:

1PM - The Sylvan Legacy at

3PM - and Canto Ostinato at Kitchener City Hall Rotunda

Don’t miss this incredible line-up of world-class musicians! Festival passes and individual tickets are available at openears.ca 💻

Today is the day! Open Ears 2026 kicks off TODAY for four days of transformative sonic experiences in the Kitchener-Wate...
06/04/2026

Today is the day! Open Ears 2026 kicks off TODAY for four days of transformative sonic experiences in the Kitchener-Waterloo region:

👂Thursday, June 4:

6PM - Interactive Performance Workshop with at

8PM - Future Pastorale at

👂Friday, June 5:

6PM - DIY Instruments and Noisemakers Workshop with at

7:30PM - and Joann Whang Confined in Everyday Scenes at Theatre

9PM - & the Open Ears Festival co-present the world premiere of Mme Caeneus’s Canteen at

👂Saturday, June 6:

11AM - Found Sound Ensemble’s Serene Music at Victoria Park Lake

1PM - ’s Fragmented Forms at

3PM - .a.ting What Brings You In presented by OE Patron Mohan Thomas at

5PM - Nimba: the performative installation at Waterloo City Hall

6PM - Improv Workshop with at

8PM - at

👂Sunday, June 7:

1PM - The Sylvan Legacy at

3PM - and Canto Ostinato at Kitchener City Hall Rotunda

👂 Duration of the festival: Hours. Minutes. Seconds. by Peter Hatch at

Don’t miss this incredible line-up of world-class musicians! Festival passes and individual tickets are available at openears.ca 💻

06/03/2026

👂Open Ears 2026 brings transformative sonic experience to the Kitchener-Waterloo region, designed for curious ears!

Join us from June 4-June 7 for a wide variety of performances and workshops, ranging from FREE to $30!

📡Tune in to new experiences: openears.ca
🎥 + in preparation of Canto Ostinato on June 7 @ 3PM

06/03/2026

THIS SUNDAY!

🎹 Canto Ostinato featuring and
⏰ June 7 @ 3 pm
📍 Kitchener City Hall Rotunda (200 King St W)
💵 FREE!

Celebrating it’s 50th anniversary Canto Ostinato by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt is one of the most quietly radical works of late-20th-century minimalism.

Typically performed by multiple keyboard instruments—famed percussion ensembles Taktus Duo and TorQ Percussion are teaming up to reimagine this iconic work. Canto Ostinato creates a warm, enveloping sound world that encourages deep listening. Its steady ostinatos and consonant harmonies evoke a sense of suspension, allowing time to feel both expanded and intimate.

🌇🌄🌅

This performance is part of Open Ears Festival 2026, which takes place June 4-7, 2026.

This experimental sound festival brings a transformative sonic experience to the Kitchener-Waterloo region, designed for curious ears!

Go to www.openears.ca to view the full festival schedule and purchase your festival pass.

🎥 of

Only two days left until Open Ears 2026!This experimental sound festival takes place across the Kitchener-Waterloo regio...
06/02/2026

Only two days left until Open Ears 2026!

This experimental sound festival takes place across the Kitchener-Waterloo region, featuring world premieres + local talent + more!

🎟️Take advantage of our festival pass, and save over $50 to attend our 6 ticketed shows (alongside our 7 free shows, installations + workshops!

See you soon:

📆June 4-7, 2026
📍Various venues around the Kitchener-Waterloo region
➡️$35/$5 student pricing for ticketed shows
➡️$152 festival pass!

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Kitchener, ON
N2G1B0

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