Musikfestival

In several working phases, the members of the Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2025 dealt intensively with questions relating to music, style, target groups, concert venues and formats. On this basis, they developed their own concert and program concepts. The discourse focused on the motto of the Musikfestival 2025: "Liberated Time". The resulting artistic projects were shared with the audience in a total of 18 concerts as part of the 2025 edition of the festival - eleven of them as part of the re:start programme in various districts 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 at Heidelberg Materials, materials and time were made tangible in an unusual way. In addition, the Festivalcampus-Ensemble performed at the festival's main venues together with renowned chamber music partners such as pianist Lukas Sternath, horn player Ben Goldscheider and violinist Dmitry Smirnov.

The musicians of the Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2025 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 Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2024 was made up of 13 musicians aged between 22 and 30 from all over Europe who were at the beginning of 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 arc from composers of the late Romantic period 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 Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2023 was made up of 22 musicians who performed at the grand opening concert of the Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival 2023 and in the following weeks in various line-ups at the re:start concerts with free admission in Heidelberg's districts.

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