As a cultural manager and concert designer, Folkert Uhde has probably changed the presentation and appearance of classical music in the 21st century through his innovative spatial concepts like no other.
He has developed the term concert design for his artistic work and established it as a theory in the discourse on new concert formats for classical music. He is the artistic director of the Köthen Bach Festival and, together with Hans-Joachim Gögl, the inventor and artistic director of the Montforter Zwischentöne in Feldkirch/Vorarlberg. The HUGO student competition for new concert dramaturgies was also created in the context of the Montforter Zwischentöne. His own artistic projects between concert design, direction and video have an international presence.
In addition to his artistic and conceptual work, the topic of regional development through culture has become increasingly important in recent years.
Folkert Uhde teaches at various colleges and universities and advises institutions on artistic and strategic issues for the future. He is also one of the mentors in the Concert21 program of the Hamburg-based Alfred Töpfer Foundation. In 2022, the German Rectors’ Conference appointed him Artistic Advisor for the D-bü competition for innovative concert formats.
As Artistic Director of the international research project Experimental Concert Research, he and an interdisciplinary team are investigating the concert experience from the audience’s perspective.