New Music Forum 2026: KO BO (Tomaž Grom)
Program
Ko bo is an originally multichannel electroacoustic composition conceived for listening in a darkened space. An acousmatic work, it embodies Grom’s exploration of sound beyond established forms and meanings. The composition weaves together field recordings, fragments of sounds from the domestic environment, prepared double bass and electronics. Ko bo is also presented here in a stereo version, specially adapted for the artist’s solo album.
The work carries the subtitle Breznapovedi (Without Announcement / Abysses of Sentences), a play on words that opens up multiple readings. It explores the limits of language in articulating sonic experience, further foregrounding the acousmatic nature of the composition. The listener is confronted directly with sound, stripped of visual cues and narrative frameworks.
The work is also deeply personal. It emerged from an experience of transience, disappearance and absence, from searching and devotion, and from an awareness of the uncertainty inherent in memory. Grom’s artistic practice could not remain untouched by the loss that has marked his life: the death of his eighteen-year-old son. The work’s premiere on 26 January was chosen to coincide with his son’s birthday, transforming the occasion into an act of remembrance. Ko bo thus forms part of Grom’s wider artistic trajectory, at once an expression of private memory, a public gesture and an artistic statement.
Presented in collaboration with Zavod SPLOH.
Find out more about the 2026 New Music Forum at ljnmf.org.