Based on the successful student management concept, Beethovenfest Bonn, under Steven Walter’s directorship, has expanded its participatory concert formats to include new communities. Professional musicians are networked with groups of people from the city who question the concert content on the basis of their own lives and offer new perspectives on concerts. We regularly collaborate with a Bonn-based group of blind and visually impaired people, with whom we develop exciting concert formats.
In the 2022 season, for example, the vision string quartet gave a »dark concert«. Blind and visually impaired people integrated their own stories into the concert.
In the 2023 season, the team of blind and visually impaired people was involved in the »Seven Last Words« concert by ensemble reflektor.
In this concert, the ensemble juxtaposed Joseph Haydn’s »Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross« with seven new »Last Words« in which the musicians deal with the challenges of our time, such as the crisis of democracy, human-caused climate change and social division. Together with the sound and video artist Frederik Werth, the community created film and audio contributions that were presented at the concert.
The project was developed in cooperation with the self-help association Pro Retina Bonn/Rhein-Sieg.