LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA launches its third season: from 24 October to 3 November the mobile concert hall will be in operation in Fukushima. The name says it all: LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA was initiated by Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger and the Japanese concert agency Masahide Kajimoto in response to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami suffered by Japan on 11 March 2011. As a “new beginning” (from the Greek arché = beginning), LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA was intended to make a contribution to cultural reconstruction in the regions of Japan that had been affected. For this purpose the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and the British artist Anish Kapoor developed an inflatable mobile concert hall.

The premiere of LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA took place in the fall of 2013 in Matsushima, and in November 2014 it operated in Sendai. Now the “Ark of music” will dock in Fukushima, in the very city which was most strongly affected by the catastrophe of 2011 and which is still most directly associated with it.

And once again the Ark Nova will serve not only as a stage for high-level artistic performances but also as a living, versatile centre for encounter: It brings together international and local musicians, artists, and audiences. It presents a deliberately wide-ranging programme meant to appeal to a great variety of people. And it combines an innovative style of architecture and musical experience.

In 2015 the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA received the Classical:NEXT Innovation Award.

More information can be found at www.ark-nova.com/en.