Artistic Director
Girisha Fernando

Biography

Girisha Fernando has been active for many years as a music curator, artistic director, musician and producer in Augsburg and internationally in a wide variety of projects. His curatorial approach always pursues the encounter of artistic standards with a diverse target audience, emphasizing cultural diversity, thematic coherence and innovative programming in different music genres and formats. His focus is on collaborative projects with an international, local and subcultural approach combined with an interdisciplinary methodology.

From 2007-2011, he was responsible for the programming of the Schwarzes Schaf music club in Augsburg, where numerous music events from the subculture found a home. He has been the music curator of the Brecht Festival since 2009 and has been able to establish pop-cultural formats such as the Lange Brechtnacht, the poetry slam and concerts by Patti Smith and Element of Crime as central elements of the festival. He is Artistic Director of the Water & Sound Festival (since 2011, formerly “Festival of Cultures”), where international stars of world music perform every year and ambitious in-house productions are also realized with Mayra Andrade, Fatoumata Diawara and the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

From 2022, the festival was expanded under his direction, deepened in terms of content and further developed to include the multidimensionality of the global theme of water – a festival for global music in the water city of Augsburg (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Other formats curated by him include “The Sounds Of God” with spiritual music, the intercultural music slam “Zugvogel Slam” for the Kulturhaus Kresslesmühle, and “brechtbühne un / plugged” at the Staatstheater Augsburg.

As a musician, composer and producer, he has recorded numerous albums, written music for theater productions at the Staatstheater Augsburg and toured throughout Europe as a bassist with a wide variety of projects, including On The Offshore, Misuk and Les Gammas. 2021 saw the release of On The Offshore’s album “In Exile”; in October 2024, the album “Bu bir demdir” by Aylin’s Soulgarden, which he produced and co-composed, was released on CPL Music to international acclaim.

In 2019 he was awarded the Pop Culture Prize ROY of the City of Augsburg for “outstanding achievements / life’s work”.

Girisha Fernando
Artistic Director