Creativity is a trait that can be learned and doesn’t care about age, as numerous workshops of the festival KlangBildKlang aimed at children, adolescents, and entire families will prove. The creative and innovative approaches in play here will overcome barriers and open up paths of approach that enable music to be experienced in a lively and inspiring way.

The November 2023 release Handbuch Musikvermittlung [Music Mediation Handbook] has not only met but also far exceeded all expectations. Editors along with their 57 co-authors from the music mediation community and adjacent fields, succeed here in sketching out the contours of music mediation in all of its dimensions, colours, and nuances across this handbook’s easily digestible chapters.

This past October, on the occasion of her 95th birthday, members of the public had the privilege of experiencing this exceptional personality in conversation at the mdw as part of an “Evening for and with Gertraud Cerha” at which a presentation of archival material also offered exclusive glimpses into her life and work.

The music mediation award LEARN TO HEAR was recently conferred for the first time in anticipation of Arnold Schönberg’s 150th birthday in September 2024. Initiated by the Arnold Schönberg Center and conceived in cooperation with the mdw’s Department of Music Education Research and Practice, this award—which will be conferred annually for a period of five years—commemorates Arnold Schönberg as a pedagogue.

Different ideas and their realisation were addressed at the international conference Turning Social – On the Social-Transformative Potential of Music Mediation, which took place at the mdw on 15 and 16 June.

With its early days behind it and with increasing self-confidence, music mediation is now forging a different path than the one originally intended for it by the classical concert business—this in light of our current societal circumstances, under the impression of a way of thinking that is decolonial and critical of power and discrimination, and in keeping with a “social turn” in the arts.

Ever since their founding in early 2021, Godot Komplex have been working on new concert formats for classical music. The declared goal of this collective is to integrate the audience into the performance and enable them to experience spaces outside their view of the stage. And as the winners of the competition “Let’s Get Digital”, these dedicated artists are now taking their first step towards a hybrid concert format.