Post for you
22. August 2025
#concert experience design
A concert always takes shape in community: artists create the sound space, the audience listens, feels and reacts - and yet direct contact between stage and hall often remains fleeting. This is exactly where our new project category Concert Experience Design steps in. We want to create spaces where music is not only heard but shared - through gestures, words, and encounters.
One of our latest formats is called "Post for you." The idea is as simple as it is effective: musicians write personal letters to their audience. Not program notes or PR texts - but small, individual messages that offer insights into their thoughts about the evening, the program, or simply their current mood.
Closeness through words
In the everyday experience of a concert, we often only see musicians on stage - highly focused, virtuosic, perhaps a bit distant. With the letters, they open a completely different space: sharing memories or inspirations that shape their playing that evening. They explain why a particular piece is important to them and reveal moments they themselves eagerly anticipate. This creates a new layer of connection between artists and audience: immediate, accessible, and personal.
We developed this format within the residency program Inside Artists of the Beethovenfest Bonn, funded by the Liz Mohn Foundation. At our first prototype - during the concert with Giorgi Gigashvili & ensemble reflektor on September 15, 2024, at the Pantheon Theater - it became clear how powerful such a letter can be, and also how playfully and creatively it can be used.
Design
Sometimes the letter lies on the seats, ready to be opened; sometimes it is handed over personally. Sometimes a musician writes to one selected person, sometimes to the entire hall. Occasionally, the letter even invites an exchange of letters - the audience can reply and extend the dialogue to a new level.
Of course, such a format also brings challenges: from practical implementation (Who writes how many letters? On what kind of paper?) to design, so the messages are not misunderstood as "advertising material." But these very questions make it exciting for us: we want to experiment, discard, rethink - ideally creating resonant spaces where music and people meet differently.
This Concert Experience Design was developed as part of Inside Artists, a residency program by the Beethovenfest Bonn, supported by the Liz Mohn Foundation, in collaboration with the festival’s program team and other artists.
