A German DAX corporation together with the live communication agency trendhouse Munich a classy and ambitious internal ceremony with awards for the most succesful sales representatives. The location chosen for this incentive was Iceland and my assignment was to develop a moving and enthralling musical dramaturgy, preferably coming entirely out of Icelanding culture.

Harpa, the location for the ceremony evening, is a modern house for concerts and events, making it very easy to mix the most divers music genres. In fact it is totally normal in Iceland that an orchestra musican, next to his classical job, plays in four completely different bands and, above all, initiates a festival for experimental electronic music.

Already legendary is the joint concert in 2014 of the Viking-metal band Skálmöld together with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra which was founded only in 1950 by Jón Leifs. Leifs was an Icelandic composer educated in Germany who tried later to connect the celtic origins of the folklore with Western art music. Leifs and Skálmöld are the ingredients for the fire dance above, opening the award ceremony.

This crossover of high and low culture which is so uncomplicated in Iceland turned to be the defining point for the further musical development of the evening. The high quality standard of the music was taken over congeniously by choreographer Johannes Härtl, the video designers by visuarte and light designer Michael Kantrowitsch.

So came into being an evening which proved that corporate events and high artistic standards aren’t contradictions but lead to an outstanding long-standing experience.

Related works:

For the Linde AG I took care of dramaturgy and concert staging in Shanghai: Linde Management Conference >>