ART CONCERTS BIOGRAPHY
“The Explosive Power of an Unusual Idea”
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 11, 1991)

ART CONCERTS, founded in 1986 and established as a limited-liability corporation under the leadership of CEO and owner Franz Abraham, is one of Germany’s most innovative and, among the younger generation, most successful concert agency. Rock music and jazz are integral parts of its repertory, as are avant-garde and classical music. The idea of an interdisciplinary palette embracing many genres is the cornerstone of the firm’s philosophy. ART CONCERTS stands for quality rather than pigeonhole thinking, for multi-genre projects rather than ossified festival concepts.

The logical consequences of this philosophy first took concrete form in ART PROJECT (Munich, 1992 and Copenhagen, 1996), a festival whose wholly new concept caused what “Der Spiegel” (newsmagazine) called a “sensation in the music business.” ART PROJECT 1996, which featured artists like Martha Argerich, Steve Reich, David Harrington/Kronos Quartet, Branford Marsalis, The Sabri Brothers, and Sven Väth, was commissioned by the city of Copenhagen, Europe’s 1996 Cultural Capital. Linking the various poles of highly disparate waves of musical expression was also the theme of the ARTONALE concert series.

Alongside numerous individual concerts and international tours (with performers like David Bowie, James Brown, Thomas Hampson, Philip Glass, Jazzmatazz, Laurie Anderson, and others), ART CONCERTS also organized concerts by the Rolling Stones at Munich’s Olympic Stadium in 1995 and 1998.

With “GANYMÉE ON WATER -  The Fantastic Restaurant Theatre”, which was given an enthusiastic reception at the world premiere in Cologne in 2004 by both audience and press alike, ART CONCERTS set a new standard for up market, in the area of high class dinnershows. Since October 2004 “GANYMÉE ON WATER” can be seen annually on the new event-ship 
“MS RheinEnergie” of the KD AG Cologne on Rhine in all big cities like Cologne, Duesseldorf, Mainz, Bonn, Duisburg and Koblenz. More cities will follow forthcoming and it will afterwords be present at international venues such as London or Paris, too.

As producer and organizer of major international projects, ART CONCERTS has earned itself a unique position on the market. Since 1998, ART OPEN AIR was the name chosen for a new business strategy which, alongside selected highlights, intends to exclusively market its own outdoor music-theater productions worldwide. With the CARMINA BURANA OPEN AIR OPERA and the new AIDA OPEN AIR OPERA and DRACULA FANTASY MUSICAL productions, ART CONCERTS has created – for the first time in Europe – a monumental, tour-capable, outdoor performance festival.

Furthermore, ART CONCERTS was the first successful organizer at Munich’s Königsplatz. The Königsplatz Open Air concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Lorin Maazel now number among Bavaria’s best-organized, large-scale, annual cultural events. For the first time in 1995, ART CONCERTS was the sole producer of a monumental music-theater production. The CARMINA BURANA OPEN AIR OPERA celebrated its much-praised premiere performance in Munich in 1995 and thus far been seen by more than 1.000.000 people around the world, like in Berlin, Sao Paulo, Vienna, Lisbon, Rio, Paris and Brussels. In 2001 we’ve been in Baalbeck (Lebanon) with two sold-out performances and 2002 in Lodz (Poland) at the International Cultural Festival (with National TV). 

In 2002 a new version was created which also fit for Indoor venues:  The CARMINA BURANA MONUMENTAL OPERA. It had its premiere in 2002/2003 on a German/Austrian tour with 10 shows (Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Nuremburg, Erfurt, Vienna).

In March 2003 we’ve been in Basel/Switzerland with three shows and end of April with two nearly sold out shows in Paris at the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy. The last tour with eleven cities in December 2003 (Geneva, Brussels, Cologne, Lyon, Paris, Marseille, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Munich, Metz) was the most successful classic event in Europe last year.

Our production of CARMINA BURANA MONUMENTAL OPERA is the world’s most successful, most spectacular and longest running classical production in its genre.

And the story continues...