Healing Waters

Echoes of Softness creates a concert that is not only heard but felt, moved through and inhabited. Organ, electronics, voice and movement merge into a spatial body of sound that unfolds throughout the church. Cushions, blankets and soft islands replace rigid rows, inviting the audience to lie down, move, listen and remain. Led by Valeria Lanner and Aaron Josi Sternbauer, the evening moves between improvisation, minimal music, classical traditions and contemporary sound, approaching softness as a shared and embodied practice. In the context of this year’s festival theme WHERE WATER GATHERS, open compositions and a walkable installation explore circulation, permeability, and interconnectedness.

Echoes of Softness is a transdisciplinary concert and exhibition format by Valeria Lanner and Aaron Josi Sternbauer that brings together music, performance and visual art as a spatial experience. Rooted in a shared practice of free improvisation with organ, voice and electronics, the project develops open compositions from analogue and digital sound sources, approaching the church not as a stage but as a resonant body.

In relation to the festival theme WHERE WATER GATHERS, Echoes of Softness engages with questions of circulation, permeability and interconnectedness. Water appears here less as a motif than as a conceptual framework: something that crosses boundaries, brings different bodies into relation and simultaneously resists fixed form. This idea is reflected in the project's working method, in which sound, space, movement and social encounter continuously respond to one another.

Contributions by visual artists expand the performance and transform the space into a walkable and tactile installation. Visitors are invited to move freely through different layers of sound and perception, creating their own connections between the artistic contributions. A temporary space emerges in which listening becomes a collective practice and resonance a mode of being together.

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