| Press Release 30 March 2026 |
| 20 to 29 March 2026MaerzMusik 2026 closes with a spatial concert installation in the festival buildingYesterday MaerzMusik 2026 celebrated the finale of an extremely successful 25th edition of the festival with the concert installation I AM ALL EARS at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. More than 150 artists were involved in the 10-day programme curated by Kamila Metwaly which also included 16 world premieres. A large proportion of the 28 events were sold out and greeted with numerous standing ovations by a total audience over 7,500. In addition, a further more than 1,700 people showed their interest by visiting the exhibitions and the events that made up at the Gropius Bau Spätschicht and the Library of MaerzMusik. The next MaerzMusik festival will take place from 12–21 March 2027. |
| In the grand finale I AM ALL EARS on 29 March the audience was invited to explore the building beyond the main stage and to discover artistic positions in the side stage, backstage and on the lower stage. There were performances of works by Ash Fure, Joyce Beetuan Koh, Aleksandra Słyż, Jessie Cox and finale co-curator Wojtek Blecharz along with works by the pioneers of electronic music Else Marie Pade and Pauline Oliveros. The open concert installation of the finale was just one of many concert formats in the festival that departed from the traditional concert conventions of performances and audience. Several works presented string instruments in unconventional spatial and performative contexts: for the world premiere of a new work with the JACK Quartett, Ellen Fullman stretched the 20-metre-long strings of her self-designed Long String Instrument across the St. Elisabeth Church. Furthermore, Florentin Ginot with his double bass solo in the garden of the Festspielhaus, cellist Okkyung Lee with a multimedia performance, and Khabat Abas with a prepared cello each offered very different perspectives on their instruments. Microtonal compositions and dense layers of sound characterised the concerts by Ensemble Dedalus at silent green, while many-sided ensemble music influenced by a variety of musical traditions could be heard in the performances by KNM Berlin and Klangforum Wien. Other highlights included concerts by Jan St. Werner with Erwan Keravec, Dirk Rothbrust, and Louis Chude-Sokei at the Radialsystem, the installation and performances by Navid Navab at Spore, the filmscreening with live music by Biliana Voutchkova in cooperation with C/O Berlin at Gropius Bau, as well as Juliet Fraser’s project Lament: a ritual of letting go at the Parochialkirche. On the opening night, 20 March, the two concerts of 11.000 Saiten (11,000 Strings) by Georg Friedrich Haas with 25 instrumentalists from Klangforum Wien and 50 pianists from the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) and the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin drew a total audience of 1,800 to Oberschöneweide. This microtonal work filled the industrial atmosphere of the former AEG turbine hall in the MaHalla with intense spheres of sound and produced a very enthusiastic response from the public. A series of standing ovations greeted Meredith Monk in the festival building at the concert in her honour as the winner of the Akademie der Künste’s Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize. Accompanied by the vocalists Katie Geissinger und Allison Sniffin she presented works from various phases of an artistic oeuvre that spans several decades. As part of the Library of MaerzMusik, numerous artists and musicians offered deeper insights into their creative practices; in collaboration with Wolke Verlag, the artist talks were expanded to include workshops, film screenings, and other formats. QuerKlang presented students from four Berlin schools once again with their own compositions on stage in the UdK rehearsal hall. The composition process was guided by composers, music teachers, and music students from the UdK. Since the first edition in 2003, over 1,000 students have participated in the program. |
| The MaerzMusik 2026 Magazine (Download) |
Berliner Festspiele | MaerzMusik 2026 closes with a spatial concert installation in the festival building.
