“Roche Continents” at the Salzburg Festival explores the common ground of creativity in art and science

For the seventh time, Roche invites 100 students from all over Europe to the Salzburg Festival for the creativity workshop “Roche Continents”. During the course of one week, students from the major European academies will discover the common grounds of innovation in arts and science, aided by a varied program of workshops and discussions with scientists and artists.

“Roche Continents” is part of Roche commitment to contemporary culture. By supporting the exchange between young minds in science and art, the program pays homage to confrontation as one of the drivers of creativity.

Franz B. Humer, Chairman of the Board of Roche, said: “Roche Continents provides young talented people with an opportunity to explore the bridges that link arts and science. This unique approach to innovation is what makes this engagement so special to Roche.”

The concert series Salzburg contemporary, featuring works of contemporary composers is an integral part of the program. The series is also financially supported by Roche.

Helga Rabl-Stadler, President of the Salzburg Festival, welcomes Roche commitment and the one hundred young guests to the Salzburg Festival: “As the cooperation between Roche and the Salzburg Festival enters its seventh year, we continue to value the involvement of a partner with an open-minded approach to new ideas in the arts.”

About Roche Continents

Roche has a long tradition of supporting artistic and cultural projects. Roche Continents is a project grown from Roche’s partnership with the Salzburg Festival, where the company sponsors Salzburg contemporary, a series of concerts featuring the works of contemporary composers. Roche Continents is aimed at art and science students aged between 20 and 30 from European Institutions. It enables them to experience contemporary music at the Salzburg Festival and to discover the common ground of creativity in the arts and science through discussion among themselves and with key personalities in both fields.

About the Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival was founded in 1920. In the midst of the First World War, founding fathers Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, Richard Strauss, Alfred Roller and Franz Schalk determined to establish the Salzburg Festival with a view to reconciling the peoples of war-torn Europe.

From its inception, the festival was conceived as a project to combat existential crisis and the erosion of values in modern society as well as the identity crisis affecting not only individuals but also entire nations.

For a short period of five to six weeks in summer, the Salzburg Festival stages operatic, theatrical and orchestral performances of outstanding artistic merit against a backdrop of flawlessly preserved Baroque architecture which is itself a marvel. The Salzburg Festival rightly enjoys a reputation for being the world’s largest and most prestigious festival, and not only in terms of the sheer number of performances, annual visitors and tickets offered for sale. Anyone who is anyone in the performing arts – conductors, directors, singers, actors and virtuosos of international repute – sets aside July and August for the rendezvous by the Salzach.