| Press Release March 18, 2026 |
| March 20–29, 2026 Kick-off MaerzMusik 2026 The festival opens on March 20 with Georg Friedrich Haas’s monumental piece 11,000 Strings at MaHalla. Today, March 18, the Berlin Grand Art Prize will be awarded to Meredith Monk at the Academy of Arts. With interdisciplinary works and concerts – including 16 world premieres – the festival presents international perspectives on contemporary and new music at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues. |
| The festival will open on March 20 with a performance by Klangforum Wien of Georg Friedrich Haas’s 11,000 Strings. The immersive concert installation for 50 pianos will be performed in the former factory hall of the MaHalla and addresses questions that have long preoccupied MaerzMusik: How can we rethink the relationship between stage and audience? How can we establish new listening habits beyond traditional structures? What counts as music – and why? |
| The finale, I AM ALL EARS, on March 29 also builds on these questions and challenges traditional forms of presenting and experiencing music. To this end, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele opens up beyond its stage area to backstage corridors, stairwells, and rooms, which are brought to life by the people who make the festival possible. The building itself becomes a listening body. The extensive program includes compositions and installations by Ash Fure, Joyce Beetuan Koh, and finale co-curator Wojtek Blecharz, performances of works by electronic music pioneers Else Marie Pade and Pauline Oliveros, as well as world premieres of a composition by Aleksandra Słyż and a new ensemble work by Jessie Cox. |
| On March 22 at the Academy of Arts, Klangforum Wien will explore archipelagic soundscapes that defy strict boundaries between instrumental and electronic music. In compositions by Laure M. Hiendl (world premiere of Chronochromatic Variations IV), Luxa M. Schüttler (i wd leave leaf & dance for ensemble and live electronics, world premiere of the ensemble version), and Gerhard Stäbler (Den Müllfahrern von San Francisco. Ein Akronym aus akustischen Erinnerungen an eine Reise), they explore what happens when memories and thoughts, poetry and installation are inscribed into musical structures – and form unexpected, hybrid connections within them. Luxa M. Schüttler appears a second time in the MaerzMusik program on March 28 at Radialsystem, where, in Noise Is a Queer Space, collaborating with friends to create an installation-based journey that explores sound from queer perspectives. |
| The collaborative, multi-part concert project Music for Commons Sensed++ focuses on music as composed sound: echoes, artifacts, glitches, and the unexpected become central elements, while melody and rhythm recede into the background. The program features world premieres of works by Erwan Keravec & Jan St. Werner (Sine Field for bagpipes and electronics), Dirk Rothbrust & Jan St. Werner (Martial Partial for percussion and electronics), Nicholas Morrish (Midwinter for bagpipes and multichannel electronics), and Wolfgang Mitterer (Attacca for bagpipes). One day later, on March 28, Louis Chude-Sokei and Jan St. Werner explore, in their ongoing project Music for Commons Sensed: No Nation Left But the Imagination, the boundaries that run through the microcosms of everyday situations. In the performance, the two musicians develop a radical audio essay composed of composed and improvised parts, in which electronic music and linguistic virtuosity converge. |
| With Cybernetic Entanglements, Ken Ueno and Viola Yip will present a new work on March 27 featuring a specially developed, wearable musical instrument that connects the two performers and integrates them into a cybernetic system. Through real-time sensor technology and precise physical impulses, a soundscape emerges that is shaped by microgestures and embodied timing. Instrument maker, composer, and performer Ellen Fullman has also been consistently crossing genre boundaries for over 40 years. On March 23, while playing her self-designed Long String Instrument, she moves among strings over twenty meters long, filling the space of St. Elisabeth Church together with the JACK Quartet with unpredictable harmonic sounds – a world premiere of the new work Energy Archive 4. DAAD fellow and cellist Okkyung Lee explores the fragile liminal space between two extreme soundscapes with Aurora (Mesophase) on March 24 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. |
| On March 25 at the Parochialkirche, Juliet Fraser explores the social dimension of sound. The lamento – the musical lament – serves as the starting point for her new performative project, Lament: a ritual of letting go. With a small ensemble, she creates a one-hour “ritual of letting go.” Together, the musicians embark on a journey across genres, historical periods, and traditions to create something “uniquely raw, timeless, and unifying.” |
| The musical program is complemented by the Library of MaerzMusik – a dialogue-based supporting program that spans all venues (with its hub at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele) and facilitates encounters between artists, musicians, and visitors. The Library will open with a conversation with Ellen Fullman and Pelle Schilling about their artistic practices on March 21 at 1:30 p.m. at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. It will continue throughout the festival with further artist talks related to the concerts at the respective venues. In addition, the Library of MaerzMusik is taking place this year for the first time as the MaerzMusik x Wolke Library and includes four additional program items focusing on readings, screenings, and workshops as well as two exhibited artworks. The new collaboration with Wolke Verlag transforms the format into a temporary space for encounters between discourse, performance, and listening. |
| The installation Organism + Excitable Chaos by Navid Navab and Garnet Willis opens this afternoon (March 18) at Spore Haus. A pipe organ more than a century old has been modified using robotics to produce turbulent sound patterns and enable unpredictable compositional scenarios. This evening, this year’s Berlin Grand Art Prize will be awarded to Meredith Monk at the Academy of Arts. A concert in her honor will take place on March 21 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in cooperation with the Academy of Arts, accompanied by two film presentations: the documentary Monk in Pieces about her as an artist and the art film Book of Days, directed by Monk. |
| To the MaerzMusik 2026 program overview |
Berliner Festspiele | MaerzMusik 2026 kicks off on March 20.
