MMB Showcase Festival, the festival associated with the Mastering the Music Business (MMB) conference, returns to Bucharest in early September with three nights of concerts at Club Expirat.
The festival brings to the stage rising bands and artists from countries such as Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Germany, Greece, Estonia, Serbia and Bulgaria, in a line-up that ranges from soul and jazz-fusion to noise rock and psychedelic garage, the organizers said.
The bands will perform both in front of the professionals attending the Mastering the Music Business conference, namely managers, booking agents, label and festival people, and journalists, and in front of the general public.
This year’s line-up mixes artists with careers spanning more than two decades with emerging voices. Cluj-based Grimus, who have opened for Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Placebo, share the bill with Greece’s Theodore, singled out by NPR for a Tiny Desk session, and with Charlotte Colace, the French-Cuban soul artist based in Berlin, winner of the Listen to Berlin Artist Award 2025. From Estonia come The Boondocks, repeat winners at the Estonian Music Awards, while the Balkans bring the psychedelic garage of Serbia’s Phony Job and the noise rock with analogue video projections of Bulgaria’s SLICR.
The Romanian scene is represented by Alexandra Căpitănescu, winner of The Voice of Romania and the country’s representative at Eurovision 2026, and by imstillFranci, a semi-finalist in the same Romanian Eurovision selection. Joining them on stage will be the jazz-fusion of Marquis Collective, the fuzzed-out psychedelic rock of Armand Popa, the art-folk of Cristina Lupu, the nostalgic dream-pop of duo miau.wav and the folk-inflected R&B of Simona Delegeanu. The international line-up is rounded out by the electronic energy of Moldova’s Cosmos în Buzunar.
MMB Showcase Festival takes place from September 1 to September 3. Entry to the event is free, on a first-come, first-served basis.
(Illustration: the organizers)
simona@romania-insider.com
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