Press Release, July 8, 2026

Music Connecting Worlds:
FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries

Young Euro Classic presents its fourth Festival-within-the-festival

With its festival-within-the-festival, entitled FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries, Young Euro Classic once again looks beyond the confines of European classical music. On the Festival weekends, ensembles from Tajikistan, Vietnam, Morocco and Argentina as well as an international FUTURE NOW Ensemble offer new listening experiences (August 1 & 2, 8 and 15 & 16). The five concerts at the Werner-Otto-Saal of Konzerthaus Berlin all take place at 4:30 pm and invite listeners to a journey through cultures and genres. This gives rise to figurative musical diary entries filled with curiosity, openness and shared sounds. 

At the beginning of FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries on August 1, the audience is invited to discover Tajik musical traditions. The ensemble  MOHIRON – whose name means “playing with excellence and talent” – combines melodies from Tajikistan with works by international composers, for example Antonio Vivaldi or Zequinha de Abreu. MOHIRON’s mix of Central Asian cultural heritage and contemporary forms of expression will be performed on traditional as well as modern instruments. The ensemble makes the harmonies between the necked bowl lutes rubab and dumra, the sounds of the flute ney, the string instrument ghichak and the electric bass flow together in a rare treat for Berlin audiences.

On August 2, electronic sounds merge with traditional music from Vietnam, under the title “Lách Tách”. The Vietnamese composer and performer Lương Huệ Trinh creates multi-layered sonic landscapes uniting traditional and electronic sounds as well as noises of daily life, inviting audiences to a journey through memories. Between reality and illusion, she accompanies the Vietnamese singer Vũ Thị Thùy, a virtuoso of the ancient melodies of Ả Đào. This ancient musical form from Northern Vietnam combines poetry and music with highly sophisticated vocal techniques and an extremely complex system of tonality, accompanied by phách (wood blocks) and trống chầu (drum). Here, two artists with different approaches to their art meet, creating audible leaps in time while sharing the same space. At the end of the concert, Lương Huệ Trinh and Vũ Thị Thùy Linh will encounter two musicians from the Orchestre National des Jeunes du Luxembourg, which performs that evening at the Main Auditorium of the Konzerthaus Berlin. In this extraordinary collaboration, the young musicians engage in a musical dialogue and impressively weave together the Festival’s various musical styles.  

From Morocco, the ensemble JISR // جسر // BRÜCKE appears at the Festival-within-the-festival on August 8. Five virtuoso musicians led by Mohcine Ramdan present jewels of Arabo-Andalusian chamber music, where Andalusian traditions meet contemporary compositions. Evolved in the shared cultural region of the Mediterranean, Arabo-Andalusian music stands for cultural exchange between Europe and North Africa. Its influence on the development of European music is unmistakable: its modal systems, complex rhythms and focus on melodic expressivity have had a lasting influence on European music theory. Instruments such as the Arabic oud, a precursor of the lute, had decisively shaped Europe’s sonic landscape. The concert illustrates the sophistication of this music and opens a differentiated perspective on the cultural interdependencies of European music history. 

What chamber music might sound like in the age of digitization is illustrated by the concert of ni-va, an ensemble from Argentina, on August 15. Using laptops, synthesizers and sample techniques as well as self-programmed sounds and algorithms, the musicians explore digital sound in real time. Their live improvisations combine a multitude of approaches to electroacoustic sound, such as acousmatic music and musique concrète. During the concert, the ensemble continuously invents dense sonic spaces in which electronic, prerecorded and apparently familiar sounds continuously recombine. There is also a special encounter: Stellan Veloce, a cellist based in Germany whose music is characterized by the warm sounds of the cello in combination with electronics, joins the four members of the ensemble in their performance. Sonic imagination hits infinity in this concert.

For the finale of FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries on Aug. 16, a unique combination of artists unite: the FUTURE NOW Ensemble &ñịoن was founded especially for the Festival-within-the-festival. The Berlin-based musicians with different cultural roots dedicate themselves to the alternatives to supposedly progressive techno-utopias – inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s words: “I feel air from different planets”. They, however, focus not on the universe, but on their immediate surroundings, their daily lives, the immediate present. Urban sounds of voices, machines, everyday objects or neighbourhood noises are transformed by &ñịoن into an auditive fiction that merges elements of concert, audio play and staged reading. Hatem Hamdy and Laris/Lara Bäucker devise a play, Joaquín Macedo uses synthesizers, metal objects and glass marbles to create multi-layered sonic colours, and Vinh Tran coaxes unusual sounds from his guitar using a violin bow and other methods. Déjà-entendu – the feeling of having heard something before – runs through the concert: the FUTURE NOW Ensemble invites you to perceive your surroundings anew, demonstrating that even the quotidian has insights into the future to deliver.

Programme Overview: Festival-within-the-Festival 
FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries

MOHIRON (Tajikistan)
Saturday, Aug. 1. at 4:30 pm
Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

Lách Tách (Vietnam)
Sunday, Aug. 2, um 16.30 Uhr
Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

JISR // جسر // BRÜCKE (Morocco)
Saturday, Aug. 8. at 4:30 pm
Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

ni-va & Stellan Veloce (Argentina) 
Saturday, Aug. 15. at 4:30 pm
Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

FUTURE NOW-Ensemble &ñịoن (international)
Sunday, Aug. 16, at 4:30 pm
Werner-Otto-Saal, Konzerthaus Berlin

All details: https://young-euro-classic.de/de/future-now 

 

Tomorrow’s Musicians Today!

Young Euro Classic. The Festival of the World’s Best Youth Orchestras 
July 31 to August 16, 2026 at the Konzerthaus Berlin

All evening concerts begin at 7 pm, all “FUTURE NOW” concerts at 4:30 pm. Selected evening concerts are preceded by pre-concert talks at the Werner-Otto-Saal at 6 pm. 

Ticket price categories 39 € / 27 € / 16 € (plus advance ticketing fees). Eligible persons may receive a 30% discount; please consult the Service page of our website. 
Tickets can be purchased via the Young Euro Classic website, the Ticket Hotline 
(+49 / (0)30 / 8410 8909, Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm) and at all regular ticket sales points.

Festival within the Festival “FUTURE NOW”: all tickets 18 €

Festival Pass for all six FUTURE NOW concerts: 70 €

Festival Pass for a selection of three FUTURE NOW concerts: 45 €

Tickets for the NEXT GENERATION Children’s Day: 8 € for children, 10 € for adults 

Download the press release as pdf here.