Our audience deserves the truth, our content deserves attention.
Recent Projects:
- “Graz on a Day in June” (short documentary, 2025/2026) – director / in progress
- “Austropop Zeitreise Fürstenfeld” (interview films and historical music documentary in 60 chapters for museum, 2024 – 2026) – research, set sound, camera, editing, sound design
- “Drei Tage in Toblach” (documentary film, 91 min., 2022 – 2025) – director, camera, editing, sound design
- “Things That Float” (short feature film by Suzie Leger, 2024 – 2026) – sound design
- “Wellenwende” (documentary film by Josephine Ahnelt, 2024/2025) – set sound
- “Santa’s Last Christmas” (documentary film by Stephan Heiniger, 2019 – 2025) – sound design
- “Begegnung” (short music film for Zurich University of the Arts, 2024) – director, editor, sound design
- “LLL” (short documentary by Josephine Ahnelt, Diagonale Award 2025 for “Best Short Documentary”) – sound editing
- Concert films (including Zurich University of the Arts, Luxembourg National Youth Orchestra, DLW Cologne, Musikverein Vienna, Mozarteum Salzburg) – director, camera, editing
- Video works for artists, foundations, cultural institutions (including Hilton Foundation, Styriarte, VOLT Kollektiv Graz, Schlosstheater Jennersdorf, Jan-Pieter Martens, Boris Bukowski, Sozialtherapeutikum Eggersdorf)
Whether as a music editor, music mediator, dramaturge or filmmaker – the challenges in my professional life have always been similar: How do I arouse the public’s interest in the grandiose stories that life writes? How can I maintain a high degree of substance despite the necessary brevity? Never being boring, but also never being superficial, is the main imperative. The magic trick: people are interested in people and their special, touching, crazy, beautiful stories.
If our protagonists open up in front of the camera or microphone and let us share in their passion, we’re already halfway there. Our job is then to find the right perspective, the right rhythm for our narrative. Strong, tangible stories are also the best advertising. That’s why I have little use for the term “marketing” when it comes to commissioned work. I don’t work for the market, but for the cause and its audience.
The audiovisual medium allows for infinitely complex narrative styles; it can captivate us in a matter of seconds – not least thanks to the sonic dimension – and let us participate in special moments, thoughts and moods.
The recipe for good stories is always the same: opening, story, ending; rhythm and humor, empathy and honesty. And a feel for the respective context of reception, which determines the audience’s expectations and attention span. Equipped with these tools, we have to ask ourselves every day anew in what form and by what means we can make a section of reality accessible to those more or less uninvolved. As relevant and substantial, as fresh and spicy as possible.
The key to all content is us humans ourselves with our experiences, ideas, faces and hands. People are at the center of every media product, regardless of its format or topic.
However, my true area of expertise remains art, especially music, the history, aesthetics and theory of which I have not only dealt with intensively in twelve years of music journalism, but also during my studies.
Work and education
2022 – open Freelance filmmaker. Currently directing, cinematography and editing for my first feature documentary about the French star pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Sound recording, sound editing, & sound design for various cinema documentaries.
2022 Music curator and content creator (video, text, photo) at Green Lobster Media Technologies (start-up audio software development and recording studio).
2019-2021 Communication, dramaturgy and music mediation at Styriarte – Steirische Kulturveranstaltungen GmbH. Work as a copywriter, video producer and photographer.
Program design and concert planning for a new pop program.Project management for the online premiere of Gerd Kühr’s “Corona-Meditation”.
2016-2019 Reporter and editor for the Kronen Zeitung (people, politics, environment, science, history, disasters, investigative).
2005-2018 Music journalist at the Kronen Zeitung, several thousand concert and premiere reviews; several hundred CD reviews.
2013-2016 study of musicology and bachelor’s degree with honors. Focus on music aesthetics, interpretation research, music history. Bachelor’s thesis on Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s recordings of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
2001 Matura with honors.
Also
1988-2000 Waldorf student in Graz (semester abroad in Chicago, USA in 1999).
1988-2000 Music lessons: violin, piano, classical guitar. Music theory, orchestra, chamber music, opera.
2001-2002 Civilian service in care for the disabled, Camphill Liebenfels in Carinthia.
Early academic attempts: German studies (2 semesters), architecture (5 semesters).
Various jobs: Kunsthaus Graz, Styrian Chamber Music Festival, HDA Graz publishing house.
2015 KUG performance scholarship.
2015-2016 Student assistant at the University of Graz.
2016 Appointed to the expert jury for the music awards of the Province of Styria.
Artistically active since 2001: Singer of the band Son Fou; film projects, amateur theater, painting, graphics.
13 NARRATIONS - Matthias Wagner 