ECHOES OF SOFTNESS | Valeria Lanner & Aaron Josi Sternbauer

Friday, April 4, 2025 | 8 p.m.

Church of St. Florian | Wiedener Hauptstraße 97, 1050 Wien

The duo ECHOES OF SOFTNESS creates a concert that is not only heard but also felt, explored, and inhabited. Organ, electronics, and voice merge into a sonic body that expands within the church walls, gently vibrates, and settles into every fold of the space. No rigid rows, no silent sitting—instead, cushions, blankets, and bean bags are scattered like islands throughout the room, forming a soft territory that invites movement, reclining, and lingering. The church—more than just a sacred space—becomes a living playground, a place of openness and physical experience within contemporary art.

Led by Valeria Lanner (she/her) and Aaron Josi Sternbauer (they/them/no pronouns), who improvise on the organ, with voice, and electronic sounds, the performance unfolds as a musical language that playfully connects genres—from minimal music and classical traditions to contemporary soundscapes. It is a 360° experience, an experiment with sound, space, and body that not only breaks conventions but also challenges hierarchies in the arts.

ECHOES OF SOFTNESS is both an invitation and an embrace—and in the closing moments: voices weaving into conversation, hands meeting over snacks and drinks. A moment of sharing, resonance, and gentle reverberation.

Valeria Lanner

Career Center Project Scholar

Valeria Lanner is an organist and pianist with Italian-Austrian roots. Equally at home in multiple genres, she performs internationally as an organ soloist and tours as a pianist with the Wiener Schmusechor. Her artistic focus lies in contemporary music, improvisation, and innovative concert formats. She has appeared at WIEN MODERN, participated in the "Improvisation Concert on Five Organs" at Salzburg Cathedral, and performed with the Junger Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin. Since 2022, she has been a regular guest at the Ostheimer Orgelfestival. Influenced by minimal music, classical traditions, and jazz, she brings these elements together in a broad-ranging repertoire that spans from early music and contemporary compositions to improvisation.

In 2024, she won first prize at the 12th Joseph Gabler Organ Competition and was a finalist at the 8th International Daniel Herz Organ Competition. That same year, she and Aaron Josi Sternbauer were awarded the Career Center project grant from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna for their interdisciplinary improvisation concert ECHOES OF SOFTNESS, a performance that merges organ with electronics and voice.

Valeria Lanner began piano lessons at the age of four and took up the organ at eleven. From 2017 to 2020, she studied piano with Stan Ford and organ with Hannfried Lucke at Pre-College Salzburg, while also training in jazz piano with Daniel Schröckenfuchs at Musikum Salzburg. She is currently pursuing studies in concert organ performance (with Jeremy Joseph), church music (with Manuel Schuen, Ingrun Fussenegger, and others), and instrumental pedagogy in piano (with Elisabeth Aigner-Monarth) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, specializing in jazz piano with Philipp Nykrin.

Aaron Josi Sternbauer

Aaron Josi Sternbauer (they/them) is an trans:disciplinary artist based in Vienna/Austria, who mostly moves in the in-between—between body and voice, image and motion, intimacy and flamboyant ecstasy. As a transdisciplinary artist, Aaron Josi unfolds a practice that touches, flirts, seduces, cares and nurtures. Sensual rooted in care and queerness, always searching for connection, for the vibrating in-between where art and community intertwine.

As part of the Vienna Soundpainting Collective, the Kiki House of Dive, and the Frisk Choir, Aaron Josi moves between collectives and solo projects, navigating multiple worlds—from underground club scenes to galleries and stages.
After completing a degree in Music and Movement Education at the MDW, they are expanding their artistic practice in Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts under Jakob Lena Knebel. Aaron Josi has left their mark across diverse artistic landscapes, collaborating with S_P_I_T Festival, TQW, Flucc, Impulstanz, Tanz die Toleranz, Brunnenpassage, Opera EKKO and many more—bridging experimental energy with established cultural spaces.

Projects like ECHOES OF SOFTNESS whisper, scream, touch. An invitation to feel, to lose oneself in textures, gestures, choreographed fragments. Art that longs not just to be seen, but to be experienced

Tickets

Free donation on the evening of the concert