Ever since its establishment in 2021, mdwPress—our university’s own open-access academic publisher—has been working to make research at the mdw both more visible and openly accessible. An advisory board comprised of outstanding researchers and scholars from within and outside the mdw both guarantees academic independence and assures publication quality.

The infrastructure research project Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory (ÆSR Lab) (2023–2026) is a collaborative effort of the University of Applied Arts, the mdw (Artistic Research Center and Department of Composition Studies and Music Production), and the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This project embodies an initiative to develop a mobile and modular sound research lab.

In our series “What does art have to do with the Earth’s climate?” the “green mdw” initiative invites concerned individuals to speak out on their personal approaches to this issue. Milly (Emilie) Groz is a Vienna-based pianist and rhythmist who works in jazz and improvised music.

Music in Society is a new master’s degree programme combining social science with artist practice that is unique worldwide and will be launched at the mdw in the 2024/25 winter semester. It was conceived by the Department of Music Sociology.

On 4 and 5 December 2023, the mdw once again did justice to its reputation as a centre of research on Hanns Eisler. The “EislerTage 2023” took place in cooperation with the International Hanns Eisler Society, the Hanns and Steffy Eisler Foundation and other partners.

One of the foremost professional goals of many Leonard Bernstein Department students is obtaining a full-time post in a renowned orchestra. In the interest of improving their chances of auditioning successfully, the Bernstein Department and the Rectorate agreed back in March 2019 to establish orchestral master classes. The idea was to afford ambitious students an additional opportunity to engage in personal exchange with colleagues from the respective orchestras before actually auditioning.

Director Christina Tscharyiski, born in Vienna in 1988, has been looking forward quite a bit to her involvement with the Max Reinhardt Seminar as a visiting director this summer semester. She’s now hard at work with the third-year acting class on a staged production of Elfriede Jelinek’s text Sonne, los jetzt!

“Green filming” refers to measures taken as part of film production that aim to reduce CO₂ output and conserve resources. The film industry’s environmental footprint is a large one: film teams travel to all kinds of locations, equipment needs to be transported, and set elements as well as costumes need to be made—all of which results in large amounts of waste as well as high energy consumption. Recent years, however, have seen a shift in attitudes.

It was a student job with concert organiser Jeunesse that laid the cornerstone of her passion for music mediation work with children and adolescents—and today, this mdw alumna is responsible for education as part of the Concert Planning & Administration staff at the Wiener Konzerthaus. At the moment, she’s busy organising the final event of KlangBildKlang together with her alma mater.

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.