Musikfestival

Over the course of several phases of work, the members of the Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2025 engaged intensively with questions related to music, stylistics, target audiences, as well as concert venues and formats. Building on this foundation, they developed their own concert and program concepts. The discourse centered on the motto of the 2025 Musikfestival: “Liberated Time.” The resulting artistic projects were shared with the audience in a total of 18 concerts as part of the 2025 festival—eleven of which took place as part of the re:start programme in various neighborhoods of Heidelberg.

A special experience was the "Through the Night" sleep concert in the Collegium Academicum, where the audience was invited to fall asleep to music and spend the night together on site. At CHAPEL in Südstadt, visitors were treated to a cross-genre musical performance with works ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to Billie Eilish.

At the “Timing Materials” LAB hosted by Heidelberg Materials, materials and time were brought to life through sound in an extraordinary way. In addition, the Festivalcampus-Ensemble performed at the festival’s main venues alongside renowned chamber music partners such as pianist Lukas Sternath, horn player Ben Goldscheider, and violinist Dmitry Smirnov.

The musicians in the 2025 Festivalcampus-Ensembles included Benjamin Günst, Chiara Sannicandro, Charlotte Spruit, Emily Turkanik, Connie Pharoah, Johannes Moehrle, Joe Pritchard, Willard Carter, Hans Greve, Žilvinas Brazauskas, Tamara Kurkiewicz, and Gorka Plada, as well as director Lea Luka Sikau.

The 2024 Festivalcampus-Ensemble consisted of 13 musicians between the ages of 22 and 30 from all over Europe who were just starting their careers.

Together, they organized six Brahms.LABs and nine re:start concerts with free admission in Heidelberg's districts. The focal composer of the 2024 festival season was Johannes Brahms, in particular his chamber music.

In its concerts, the Festivalcampus-Ensemble spanned a musical spectrum ranging from late Romantic composers to contemporary music, pop, jazz, and world music.

With its concerts as part of the re:start program, the ensemble reached around 2000 people in Heidelberg's districts at venues such as CHAPEL in Südstadt, Metropolink's Commissary in Patrick-Henry-Village and the Augustinum on Emmertsgrund.

The ensemble consisted of Charlotte Thiele (violin), Juliette Beauchamp (violin), Benjamin Günst (violin), Wolke Milena Wilke (violin), Nina Tonji (viola), Toby Cook (viola), Pieter de Koe (violoncello), Bryan Cheng (violoncello), Hans Greve (double bass), Marlene Heiß (piano), Julius Schepansky (accordion/jazz piano), Žilvinas Brazauskas (clarinet) and Tamara Kurkiewicz (percussion).

The 2023 Festivalcampus-Ensemble consisted of 22 musicians who performed at the grand opening concert of the 2023 Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival and, in the weeks that followed, in various lineups at the re:start concerts—all with free admission—in Heidelberg’s neighborhoods.

These included the ensembles Feguro Quartet (Jona Schibilsky, Benjamin Günst, Toby Cook, Milan Drake), Nerida Quartet (Saskia Niehl, Nevena Tochev, Grace Leehan, Alma Tedde), Kandinsky Quartet (Hannah Kandinsky, Evgenii Artemenkov, Ignazio Alayza, Antonio Gervilla), qunst.quintett (Alexander Koval, Julia Obergfell*, Martin Fuchs, Andreas Becker) and the soloists Charlotte Thiele, Sara Göbel, Lisa Rauchbach, Aoi Selditz and Hans Greve.

*due to illness Stefan Zeininger, Augustin Gorisse and Vicente Castello stepped in