He helped shape and guide the areas of choir and ensemble conducting at the mdw for years, and his insider’s knowledge of the Austrian choral landscape was virtually unparalleled. Whether as a conductor, vocal coach, choir director, recording producer, composer, book author, jury member, or passionate educator, everything he did was always of up-to-the-minute relevance.

Live again at last! The euphoria generated by once more being able to experience a “real” ECMA session was on full display in late May of this year when the members of six ensembles came together in Grafenegg. This session witnessed an entire week of intense rehearsals coached by an international group of teachers and was crowned by a best-of concert before a nearly 200-strong audience.

Easing the arrival of international first-semester students in Vienna and at the University, helping them network socially once here: it was a desire to do precisely these things that inspired the Buddy Programme’s conception as part of the mdw Diversity Strategy back in 2019.

With 30 years now under its belt, isa – the International Summer Academy of the mdw is expanding its interdisciplinary canon of programmes (isaMasterclass, isaFestival, isaScience, isaOutreach, isaOperetta) by isaDigital, which premiered in August of last year.

To me, sustainability means… thinking in a networked manner. Weighing the consequences of each decision and considering whether the resource consumption it will entail (in terms of raw materials, energy, working hours, money) is really worth it.

It was quite soon following its completion last summer that the Future Art Lab was filled with life. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, meant that the grand opening of this new mdw Campus building would have to wait.

So here we are: in its ninth year of existence, isaScience is going “hybrid”! With the mdw’s international and interdisciplinary summer conference having been postponed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the isaScience team is now preparing for its first-ever hybrid edition, in which it will pick up right where it left off.