Why do teenagers find SchülerVZ, flickr or YouTube so fantastic? What are they finding in the communities on the internet that doesn't exist in real life, and what exactly are they doing with it? The JFF- Institut für Medienpädagogik (Institute for Media Education) looks into these questions and learns from a 15 year-old "I think the future will just be one big Second Life."...
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A look at the unfunky Jazzrock, one-sided musical dialogues, impressive faux-pas and high-spirited communication games between Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley of this year's Berlin Jazz Festival and the Total Music Meeting for improvised music. By Markus Schneider
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The pop world ain't what it used to be. Small-fry nations shaped the programme at this year's Popkomm music platform in Berlin. Globalisation is making its mark on the pop music landscape. By Daniel Bax
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Remembering love and death: why we need operas like "La Traviata" now more than ever. By Eva Demski
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The conductor Masaaki Suzuki and his enchanting Japanese Bach Collegium have just toured Germany, leaving a trail of speechless audiences in their wake. By Wolfram Goertz
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Berlin rappers Bushido, Sido, Fler and others shock with obscene and gruesome lyrics. How dangerous is Hauptstadt Rap? By Thomas Groß
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Festival critics rarely agree on anything, but this time it's pretty much unanimous: Willy Decker's staging of "La Traviata" at the Salzburg Festival is a mega-hit. Thanks largely to the stupendous soprano Anna Netrebko. By Jürg Stenzl
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"Die Gezeichneten" (The Marked Ones) by Franz Schreker, which is playing at this year's Salzburg festival, has got critic Peter Hagmann hot under the collar. For him, the opera vibrates, mounts and climaxes.
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This year's Bayreuth Festival opened with a new interpretation of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" by Swiss director Christoph Marthaler. The stakes were high; the last Tristan, by Heiner Müller, enjoyed iconographic status. And for Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, this year's performance was an unspectacular failure, with the notable exception of Nina Stemme's brilliant Isolde.
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After turning his back on the opera eleven years ago and dedicating himself entirely to cinema, cult director Patrice Chereau has returned to the Festival international d'art lyrique in Aix en Provence with an impeccable staging of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte". But why? By Claus Spahn
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Sony has already packed its bags and left Berlin but the music scene is unconcerned. Electronic music in the German capital is in the hands of a lively network of small labels, experimental, alive and kicking. By Oliver Ilan Schulz
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In Roskilde, people don't wait for Bob Geldof to provide them with live music. Every year, those willing to do without sleep and toilets take part in the raucous ritual of the Roskilde Festival. And proceeds go to a worthy cause. This year, everything was great, except the music. By Andreas Becker
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On the 25th anniversary of the legendary German band Einstürzende
Neubauten, Max Dax interviewed its co-founder and multi-instrumentalist
Alexander Hacke on Berlin in the eighties and the End Time aesthetics
of Berlin's Kreuzberg district.
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