December of last year witnessed the second opening event of the International Research Center – Gender and Performativity (ICGP). With some distance, we can now look back upon a successful symposium. Focusing on the relationship between gendering and racialisation from a global perspective, topics such as fascistisation, populism, and institutional complicity were critically analysed.

For musicians, music mediators, and researchers, isa opens up a space where artistic stances can be contemplated, advanced in nuanced ways, and enabled to have a direct impact on society.

In this mdw Magazine interview, the intriguing genesis of the community music project weites Nahen [Proximate Distance] and the preparations for its performance on the mdw Campus on 3 June 2026 are discussed by Axel Petri-Preis (co-artistic director, Participation and Community), Peter Jakober (co-artistic director, Composition), Bettina Büttner-Krammer (Head of Music Education, Wiener Symphoniker), Lukas Kobermann (conductor of the wind ensemble Blasmusik Kagran), Mariia Pysmenna (secondary school teacher, MS Johann-Hoffmann-Platz), and Emir Handzo (secondary school teacher, MS Brüßlgasse).

He brings music to theatre. Imre Lichtenberger Bozoki is a true allrounder of the Austrian theatre scene—and since last autumn, he’s been teaching Music and Dramatic Expression at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. He talked with us about how he went from trumpeter to stage director, why he thinks the Viennese scene is one-of-a-kind, and why his subject is probably the most relaxed one of all at the Max Reinhardt Seminar.

Every February, Berlin becomes the centre of the cinematic world. The Berlinale, whose competition awards the famed Golden and Silver Bears, is one of the world’s biggest film festivals. It boasts a varied array of programme sections, among them the short film competition Berlinale Shorts—which, in 2026, included a first-ever film from Film Academy Vienna: Ein Unfall [An Accident] by Film Academy student Angelika Spangel.

My name is Ivan Beaufils. I study IGP – Voice, IGP – Piano, and Education (ME & IME) since 2018.

“One of my earliest specific memories is from my musical training as a small child. We were standing around an open grand piano and were supposed to see how long we could actually hear a note,” remembers the passionate musician. Thanks to music-loving parents who wanted to give him the opportunity to acquire a musical education, the Lower Austria native began with piano lessons in the first form of primary school and then took guitar and saxophone lessons later on.

That a seminar for acting and directing should be named for a founder who was seldom present at his own institution is a truly remarkable circumstance. Just why this is not a contradiction and just how Max Reinhardt managed to make precisely this acting school into one of the German-speaking region’s most illustrious can now be learned—along with numerous other intriguing details—from a new book by Peter Roessler.