In May 2026, the interdisciplinary festival “TODAS. Latin American Women* Musicians in Vienna. Concerts, Lecture, Dialogues” took place at the mdw. This event was an outcome of the research project “Reverse Ethnomusicology: Migrant Musicians as Researchers”. Co-curator Gabriela Dossow Ponce describes how the festival evolved and why it was so important.

It was with these tongue-in-cheek lines that Hans Gál (1890–1987) gently but firmly reminded the members of his madrigal choir of their first rehearsal in 1938. This musical good-luck pig was served up as a three-part canon formatted as a postcard and garnished with tastefully placed madrigalisms. And indeed, madrigals were a huge love of this versatile musician—a fact that even earned him the nickname “Madri-Gál”.

When exactly does a pandemic begin, and when does it end? Is there a clear “before”, “during”, and “after”, or does our understanding of such things have more to do with our perception of temporality? And by what exactly are the knowledge and memories we have of past pandemics shaped? Simply by images, monuments, and statistics? Or perhaps also by sounds and music?

Arno Böhler and Susanne Valerie Granzer’s collection entitled The Flavor of Thinking is a 21st-century engagement with one of Western philosophy’s oldest problems: the (perceived) tension between “thinking” and “feeling”.

I'm Elias Zahraddnik and I study Music Education for Voice and Instruments (IGP) – Guitar (Popular Music) at the MA level since 2017.

“These days, when I look back, I sometimes ask myself where I got the self-confidence to go out into the big wide world,” says Anke Schad-Spindler with a laugh. Now general manager and scholarly head of EDUCULT as well as a freelance businesswoman, this mdw alumna studied in Germany, Italy, England, and Austria—and her dissertation on cultural governance was awarded a state prize by what was then Austria’s Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

As part of a Eurovision-focused popular music seminar, Bennett worked with students Linda Oppelmayer, Mariella Ackerl, and Leonie Bauer to investigate the contest’s musical language. Their collaboration combined detailed listening, a multi-year data set, and reflection on how popular music shifts along with culture and technology

The second edition of isaCommunity, held on the mdw Campus and in the Music in Dialogue Hall (MiD-Saal) at Vienna’s Gasometer complex in July 2026, saw young musicians once again converge on Vienna. Sixteen participants from Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East spent an entire week here working at the interface between artistic practice and social engagement.

2024 mdw Magazine reported on the successful European tour of South Africa’s MIAGI (Music is a great investment) Orchestra and on its many years of partnership with the mdw. This collaboration has since been continued in an impressive way with a concert at Podium Zukunft in Frankfurt on 27 April 2026. The focus here was less on racking up a further guest appearance than it was on continuing the consistent refinement of an artistic idea.

On 15 May 2026, the singer-songwriter and band competition “Alle Neun in Contest” celebrated its première edition on the mdw Campus. Singer-songwriters and small bands had been nominated by all nine of Austria’s public and private tertiary-level institutions of musical training to face off and provide a multifaceted glimpse into the current pop music scene.