Bringing a Season vividly to life

Every Brandenburg concert tells a different story, and for Season 2027, we wanted our creative campaign to do the same.

For the fifth consecutive season, we've collaborated with Sydney-based creative agency Collider Studio to bring our musical world to life. The result is a dreamlike journey through extraordinary Australian landscapes, where Brandenburg musicians appear suspended in time, surrounded by swirling colour and otherworldly scenery.

But there's more to these images than meets the eye. Every landscape, every musician and every movement began with photography, brought together using an experimental digital technique that blurs the boundaries between photography, painting and animation.

We sat down with Collider's Creative Director and Co-Founder, Andrew van der Westhuyzen, to discover the inspiration behind the campaign, how it all came together and why, after five years, there's still plenty of room to surprise each other.

When Collider first partnered with the Brandenburg in 2022, the agency helped establish a refreshed visual identity for our 2023 Season that celebrated the orchestra's traditional roots while embracing a contemporary approach to storytelling.

Five seasons later, that philosophy remains at the heart of the relationship.

"Every year when we sit down to think about how to express the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, I try and keep the same key mantras in place that we developed when we rebranded the company in 2022," Andrew explains.

Rather than establishing a particular visual style and repeating it each year, the creative team approaches every new season with fresh eyes. The music itself, together with Artistic Director Paul Dyer's vision for the year ahead, provides the starting point.

Over time, the relationship has developed into one built on creative freedom and a shared willingness to experiment.

"There's a beautiful shorthand that comes from the trust we're given to put our ideas forward. Nothing is off the table."

For Season 2027, that freedom would take the team somewhere entirely new.

The initial inspiration came from an intriguing suggestion from Paul Dyer. He wanted the musicians to feature prominently in the campaign, but without their instruments. Rather than capturing them in performance, he imagined them simply being present.

It was an unusual starting point for a campaign celebrating an orchestra, and one that immediately captured Andrew's imagination.

Musicians might be responsible for creating extraordinary movement through sound, but when performing, they're often confined to a remarkably small physical space. Andrew was fascinated by this contrast between the energy of the music and the relative stillness of the people creating it.

This observation became the foundation of the campaign.

Each musician would appear suspended in a moment, almost like the subject of a painted portrait. Around them, the world could move, transform and dissolve, carrying the audience from one musical experience to the next.

"These solo frozen moments felt like a series of tableaus to move through, like floating through a dream."

The result is a collection of surreal visual worlds in which the musicians become the still point amid an ever-changing landscape.

Despite appearances, our musicians weren't transported to remote cliffs, mysterious canyons or lush rainforests for an elaborate location shoot. In fact, they never had to leave the office.

Instead, Collider used an experimental digital technique called 3D Gaussian Splatting, which transforms photographic imagery into three-dimensional environments. While typically used to achieve realistic digital recreations, Andrew and his team deliberately manipulated the technology to create a softer, more impressionistic aesthetic, with colours and textures blending together like a painting.

The musicians were photographed in a rehearsal room at the Brandenburg's Sydney offices, holding carefully considered poses while the team captured hundreds of images. Meanwhile, Collider travelled across New South Wales, photographing dramatic sandstone cliffs, narrow canyons and lush rainforests.

These two sets of imagery were then brought together digitally, placing our musicians within extraordinary landscapes and giving Collider the freedom to experiment with scale, atmosphere and movement.

The result is a series of dreamlike environments that might look like elaborate cinematic productions, but are actually constructed entirely from still photography.

One of the defining characteristics of every Brandenburg season is its musical variety. Season 2027 is no exception, with six concerts offering distinctly different experiences.

For Collider, the challenge was to give each concert its own visual personality while ensuring the campaign still felt like one continuous journey.

The answer lay in colour, landscape and movement.

Each visual world was developed through carefully selected locations, wardrobe styling and colour palettes. Some environments feel warm and almost scorched, while others are cooler, softer and more ethereal.

But the transitions between these worlds were just as important as the individual images themselves.

Andrew describes the movement of the camera as being like a bee travelling from flower to flower, carrying the viewer between musicians and their surroundings.

"The music reminded me of an old fairground carousel, so there are a lot of moments where these clouds of colours are simply spinning to the music between performers."

It's this sense of movement that brings the campaign to life. Colours swirl, landscapes dissolve and the audience is carried from one scene to another, almost as though travelling through a series of memories.

The result is a visual journey that reflects the variety of the season while retaining a distinctive creative identity.

Beyond the technology and extraordinary landscapes, the musicians remain at the heart of this year's campaign.

"Brandenburg continues to explore bold interpretations of Baroque music and champion new young talents, and our task is to support the expression of that vision in a way that keeps celebrating the music."

For Andrew, five years of creative collaboration have been driven by a shared desire to keep exploring new ideas and surprising audiences.

"We owe it to audiences both new and old to keep trying to surprise them and keep them on their toes. Even old classics can still hold a timeless energy."

But above all, Andrew hopes the campaign celebrates the people who bring the music to life.

"I hope one of the main takeaways from the trailer this year is that at the heart of all this are these incredibly talented people, the artists young and old that can stand there and create magic in front of us with old bits of wood, string and metal."

And ultimately, nothing quite compares to experiencing that magic live.

From the first photographs to the finished Season 2027 campaign, discover how Collider brought six extraordinary visual worlds to life in our behind-the-scenes timelapse video below. Then see how it all came together in the finished product; our Season 2027 Launch Video.