What singer Aida Garifullina and digitization have in common

The young soprano Aida Garifullina enraptures opera lovers worldwide. The current star of the Vienna State Opera studied in Nuremberg. However, the Nuremberg University of Music not only launched Aida Garifullina into opera heaven, but has also recently become a centre for digital innovation funded by the German government. This makes Nuremberg the perfect place for it, as it is an important trade fair and congress location for events in the fields of digitalization, IT and electronics. For this reason, the Federal Government's Digital Summit was held in Nuremberg this week.

Aida Garifullina became famous in a flash. An audience of millions listened to her when she sang at the opening of the FIFA World Cup in Moscow, together with Robbie Williams. Aida Garifullina took her first steps towards becoming a professional singer in Nuremberg. Bach, Beethoven, Handel. With her move from Russia to Nuremberg, Aida Garifullina suddenly found herself in the land of music she had listened to throughout her childhood and youth. The young Russian's talent had been recognized early on. The then 17-year-old had lessons with the famous Wagner tenor Siegfried Jerusalem, the former president of the Nuremberg Academy of Music. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Garifullina said that the Nuremberg Hochschule had become like a second family to her, and that Siegfried Jerusalem had taken great care of his students.

Garifullina now lives in Vienna, singing her way from success to success at the famous Vienna Opera. The concept of the Nuremberg Academy of Music is to pay special attention to the advancement of its students. Even in the age of digitalisation. Together with the Technical University and the Academy of Fine Arts, the Nuremberg music researchers have founded LEONARDO, "Centre for Creativity and Innovation". LEONARDO is funded by the German federal government and the German states with almost ten million euros. With their concept, which primarily explores digital developments, the Nuremberg university trio prevailed over 117 other applicants in the Germany-wide "Innovative University" competition.

It is about the "implementation of innovative strategies for the transfer of ideas, knowledge and technology", in short, about sparkling ideas! And these are mostly aimed at digital solutions. "Aesthetic reality and the value of music are undergoing a fundamental change as a result of digitalisation. In their diversity, digital media such as laptops, smartphones, tablets or smartwatches are permeating the way we deal with music, giving rise to completely new areas of application and business models," says Prof. Christoph Adt, Siegfried Jerusalem's successor as President of the Hochschule für Musik.

The first student projects have already been completed, including digital sound systems, virtual worlds and robots with artificial intelligence. The reason this is working so well, say those involved, is that for the first time a technical university is cooperating with two artistic universities in the area of knowledge and technology transfer!

Hardly older than her successors at the Nuremberg Academy of Music, Aida Garifullina is also active in the digital world. She has 1,323 posts on her Instagram account alone, which is subscribed to by over 680,000 people; her videos can have over 30,000 views. Part of her job, she says, is to make a public appearance - in the real world as well as in the digital one.