Non-Piano / Toy Piano

The Non-Piano / Toy Piano Weekend delves into a magical world of princesses, princes, enchanted creatures and magical objects, exploring traditional versions, as well as present day takes and twists on fairy tales and their characters. This time around you can undertake your musical expedition directly from the comfort of your own living room as we have turned this year's festival into a unique livestream experience.

Under the title Cinderella in Streamland, we invite you to join us on December 13th at 8pm CET to go on an exciting adventure through the fairytale forest. Specially redesigned for a streaming concert, we will present a program that takes the audience on a roller coaster ride revealing different perspectives on Cinderella and her comrades Rapunzel and the Little Mermaid. Strong-headed, brave, good-hearted and kind: do they all have the fate to become simply the wives of handsome, rich princes?
Needless to say there are also storytellers, magic wands and, of course,… magical kisses!

Access to the livestream will be given to all StartNext backers who have donated 5€ or more to our campaign (this will, of course, also be applied retroactively). Enchanting and magical performances on a diverse selection of toy pianos and other toy instruments await.

Originally, this year's festival was meant to consist of four concerts with in-person audiences but the COVID pandemic and Germany's November lockdown unfortunately foiled our plans. Due to the added costs caused by the postponement and the loss of revenue from ticket sales, we would very much appreciate your support on this journey.

It has always been our goal to make contemporary and experimental music experiences accessible to a wide range of audiences and this year's streaming format will allow us to reach even more people than before. We aim to capture the joy of unusual sounds as well as present them visually and with that: amuse, captivate and astonish you, our audience. And we would like to show you that, whether it's a toy piano or a concert grand, great music is hidden everywhere: you only need to look for it!

Our target audience are all music and theater enthusiasts who want to take a fairytale journey into unfathomed worlds of sound.

All backers who donate 5€ or more to our campaign will receive access to the full festival livestream which will be broadcast on December 13th 2020.

Your support helps us pay our wonderful performers the kinds of fees they deserve despite this year's limited budget. Putting on every single Non-Piano / Toy Piano Weekend involves months of rehearsing and preparing and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. We would like to adequately remunerate them for that and would greatly appreciate your help.

The €5000 of the first funding goal will benefit the streaming festival on December 13th. Room rent, artist fees, additional staff and licensing fees all need to be paid for. Part of the costs are covered by funding, but due to the postponement of this year's festival, the absence of an in-person audience and the resulting losses in ticket sales, we would be very happy to receive additional support from you. The money raised via crowdfunding will be used to raise artist fees.

Should we reach our second funding goal of €10,000, we will use the extra funds to host an additional digital Non-Piano evening which will be available to all crowdfunding backers. Here the performers will present their highlights from the concert, grant a peek behind the curtain of this year's festival, answer audience questions and premiere a number of artistic music videos specially produced for the evening.*

*The date of this Non-Piano evening is yet to be determined. The program for this evening is still in the planning stages and subject to change.