For these reasons, Klangspuren’s directors have decided to restructure the festival to take the Corona situation into account. The new motto is “Marking Time”. The idea was to put together a program that would, from today’s perspective, have not just a vague possibility but a high probability of being realized. To this end, almost all the musicians performing at this year’s Klangspuren festival currently live in Austria and are thus less likely to be hindered by travel restrictions.This gives us the opportunity to emphasize the enormous density of first-class, internationally recognized musicians from Austria – whether from the con-temporary composed music or free improvisation scenes. The crème de la crème of the experimental scene in Austria will come together in an improvisation focus on September 18/19, 2020. And during the course of the festival all four major Austrian contemporary music ensembles will perform in Tyrol: from PHACE (09/12), to oenm (09/13) and Studio Dan (09/17), to Klangforum Wien (09/20).

Internationality is of particular importance to the members of the Ensemble Modern, this also applies to the training and instruction of young musicians. In this respect, the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA), which is held annually at Klangspuren festival, has been forced by the pandemic to make some bitter adjust-ments. Due to current travel restrictions, only musicians from Europe will be able to come to Tyrol, and rehearsals must be conducted in small groups, thus the Acade-my will assume an emphasis more oriented on chamber music. Moreover, Adriana Hölszky and Frank Gratkowski, who were supposed to be the Artists in Residence in 2020, will serve in this capacity in 2021. IEMA scholarship recipients will neverthe-less be participating in three Klangspuren projects in 2020: in the Musical Hike with “City Shorts” in Schwaz (09/12), in the Wandelkonzert (09/14), and in the traditional closing concert (09/16) at the Haus der Musik in Innsbruck.