A unique and extremely successful cooperative relationship is being carried on and reinvented. Ars Electronica’s Big Concert Night in collaboration with the renowned Bruckner Orchester Linz is a jewel of the festival. There’s scarcely a comparable opportunity to experience such an intensive encounter of instrumental music-making and digital sounds, and of the music of the past and present. This year, Markus Poschner, the new conductor of the Bruckner Orchester, will add a new musical wrinkle to this encounter amidst the huge Gleishalle (Track Hall) of POSTCITY. Poschner is also a superb jazz pianist and has invited several other soloists working in this genre to join him on his Big Concert Night. Classical orchestral music—Scherzo and Adagio from Bruckner’s 8th Symphony—jazz, sound art and digital visualizations will be presented on multiple stages set up throughout the Gleishalle, among which the audience can experience the evening’s tonal realms in peripatetic fashion. Next up are the prizewinners in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Music and Sound Art category. The third part of program is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the ORF–Austria Broadcasting Company’s Ö1 Kunstradio.

Bruckner Orchester Linz (AT)

At the center of the Big Concert Night in POSTCITY are the two middle movements of Anton Bruckner’s 8th Symphony, the crux on which the entire performance hinges. This is right and wrong at the same time! Bruckner’s music forms the foundation, the walls and perhaps the heavens too, in which audience members, situated in the middle of the Gleishalle, are free to move about. The listeners are in the center, in the arena, flanked on one side by Bruckner Orchester Linz and on the other by a band of musicians including world-class guitarist Nguyên Lê, Hugo Siegmeth (reeds), Harald Scharf (bass) and Bastian Jütte (drums). A symphonic space is to be configured about the audience, who will be able to shift locations, stay put and be receptive to sound arriving from all directions.