With wit, poetry and great experience in children’s musical theater, the congenial team Weiss/Kampe transforms the ascolta musicians into seven dwarfs who first must find their team spirit in order to achieve great goals.

Gordon Kampe composition, Manfred Weiss text/scenic concept, Theresa Szorek narrator, Ensemble Ascolta

Image, text and sound create a narrative about the drama in our European neighboring country that is as differentiated as it is haunting. After the performance, ECHOES will be on view as an installation until February 5.

By and with Nadya Sayapina, Lesia Pcholka, Zhanna Gladko, Viktoriia Vitrenko, Gareth Davis, Christoph Ogiermann

With wit, poetry and great experience in children’s musical theater, the congenial team Weiss/Kampe transforms the ascolta musicians into seven dwarfs who first must find their team spirit in order to achieve great goals.

Gordon Kampe composition, Manfred Weiss text/scenic concept, Theresa Szorek narrator, Ensemble Ascolta

With a celebration of the »physicality of sound« and in »unique moments that express what passes and cannot be reconstructed,« Oscar Bianchi and Annesley Black open the five plentiful concert days at the Theaterhaus.

Oscar Bianchi: Plenty for two. Eine idiosynkratische Allianz ᵁᴬ
Annesley Black: Tolerance Stacks II ᵁᴬ
Ensemble Musikfabrik, Clement Power conductor

»The sensory drama of the madrigals becomes a deep underwater theater, where pure sensations and modulations between visual and felt sound create a provocation that allows listeners to become their own storytellers.«

Chaya Czernowin: IMMATERIAL ᵁᴬ
I. A book of madrigals and intermezzos  II. A sound theater
Neue Vocalsolisten

To excel on the instrument, but to live precariously: This is what freelance musicians have always done. Now, however, the arts are increasingly calling the »masterful« into question. A project about the precarious as a principle of form and about giving up control over the musical situation.

Werke von Carola Bauckholt & Elizabeth Hobbs ᵁᴬ, Simon Løffler, Laurence Crane, Lisa Streich
mit Ellen Ugelvik piano/performance, Jennifer Torrence percussion/performance, Anders Førisdal performance

Three prize winners, three different aesthetic concepts. The »tonal found objects« of the first prize winner Benjamin Scheuer, who tries to recreate sounds with various toys and sound objects, are often humorous, strange and full of extra-musical associations.

Works by Mikołaj Laskowski, Benjamin Scheuer and Francesco Ciurlo with Kilian Herold clarinet, Teodoro Anzellotti accordion, Peter Veale oboe, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Clement Power conductor

At the end of the evening, the precarious leads to a post-apocalyptic situation: dream sequences between concert, audio play, music theater, text, modernism nostalgia and choreography.

Trond Reinholdtsen: NO IDEAS. NO NEW PERSPECTIVE
for Ellen, Jennifer, emergency instruments, ghosts, floating instruments, text, rain samples, modernist-nostalgic-neoclassical-revival video documentation, the Blob, varying degrees of darkness and choir ᵁᴬ

Kinga Tóth and Silvia Rosani react to male-dominated social structures with a hybrid performance that makes external determination, hierarchy and feelings of powerlessness directly tangible.

Performance & talk by & with the writer/performer Kinga Toth & the composer Silvia Rosani.
In the context of the Hannsmann-Poethen Literature Scholarship

»Sounds of despair at a dull-dumb human world in failure«: Ferro Canto, composed for the Donaueschinger Musiktage 1989, sings »of the man who beat an iron drum with heavy wooden sticks … and who–ridden by the demon of knowledge–nevertheless blows for departure.«

Works by Saed Haddad ᵁᴬ, Ying Wang ᵁᴬ and Volker Heyn ᵁᴬ
Pedro Carneiro quarter-tone marimba, SWR Symphonieorchester, SWR Experimentalstudio, Gregor Mayrhofer conductor

»A little bit of utopian megalomania« is always part of Pony says, the trio that combines virtuosity and charisma with artistic care and performative ambition. Their hybrid concert will offer a completely different experience online than to the audience at the Theaterhaus.

Works by Steven Takasugi ᵁᴬ and Jessie Marino ᵁᴬ
Lucas Gérin percussion, Felix Nagl piano, Thilo Ruck guitar

»It’s probably time to take a breath, observe our inner silence, listen deeply to the ‘present’ voices,« says Liping Ting, who joins musicians live from Taipei (Taiwan) for a beautifully poetic performance in Stuttgart.

Hybrid performance for performer, oboe, violoncello, synthesizer & video with Liping Ting voice/performance (live streamed from Taiwan), Simon Strasser oboe, Mathis Mayr violoncello, Ernst Surberg synthesizer

Anonyme Bestattungen (Anonymous funerals)
»A music that leaves you alone with everything without having to feel lonely. A music that is distant from the ego, that steps back behind sensibility to leave room for sensation…« Over 4 hours of music that can be attended in full or in parts.

Isabel Mundry: Figura for two trumpets ᵁᴬ. Robin Hoffmann: Anonyme Bestattungen ᵁᴬ with Marco Blaauw, Markus Schwind, Ensemble Ascolta.

Aus Text, Bildern, Fotos und Objekten formulierte der Künstler Sergey Shabohin eine ergreifende Erzählung über die staatlichen Strukturen, die die Bürger in Belarus unter Druck setzen. Musikalisch kommentiert von Christoph Ogiermann, werden die »Practises  of Subordination« für uns entschlüsselt von Lena Prents. Valzhyna Mort spricht mit dem Georg-Büchner-Preisträger Jan Wagner über ihren Gedichtband »Musik für die Toten und Auferstandenen«, aus dem Oxana Omelchuk das Gedicht »Music for Girls Voice and Bison« musikalisch interpretiert.

Uli Löffler and Hannah Weirich expose their impressive arsenal of analog keyboards »to the innovative spirit of the current generation of composers« and let the formerly futuristic instruments experience a not at all nostalgic renaissance.

Works by Dariya Maminova, Eivind Buene, Oxana Omelchuk ᵁᴬ, Milica Djordjević ᵁᴬ, Gordon Kampe with Hannah Weirich violine/e-Violin, Ulrich Löffler Minimoog, Behringer 2600 Synthesizer, Yamaha YC-30 Orgel, Hohner Clavinet, Philicorda, Hohner String Melody

To understand our involvement in global structures, the actors start a mushroom expedition. With their hypothesis that the bizarre world of hyphae and mycelia could be the model for a better world, they also engage the digital audience in an adventurous hybrid game.

Andreas Eduardo Frank composition, Matthias Rebstock stage direction/libretto, Sabine Hilscher stage and costume design, alisch berlec hönow graphic design, Miguel Ángel García Martín percussion / objects, Neue Vocalsolisten

As if it were a figure with a thousand faces: thanks to the guitar’s innumerable possibilities (microtonal, agile, resonant, percussive, spectral, rhythmic, harmonic, melodic), Fuentes forms a gigantic instrument that »floats above a great labyrinthine sound space.«

Poème Maudit for microtonal guitar quartet & guitar ensemble ᵁᴬ
Arturo Fuentes composition/direction/light, aleph Gitarrenquartett, Jugend-Gitarrenorchester Baden-Württemberg

The two guests at Solitude share an interest in late medieval music, extended pure tuning, and improvisation. The protagonist is a portable organ modeled after a 13th century instrument.

Midmeste ᵁᴬ by and with James Rushford Portativ-Orgel, Judith Hamann Violoncello
A project of the Akademie Schloss Solitude

The two soloists want to make »the largely unprocessed electroacoustic potential« of their unusual combination of instruments audible, and compose a dramaturgically continuous performance that leads into an open improvisational finale.

Works by Anna Sowa ᵁᴬ, Clara Iannotta ᵁᴬ, Georges Aperghis, Hugue Dufourt, Christopher Trapani ᵁᴬ with Uli Fussenegger double bass, Yaron Deutsch e-guitar

The five staged song cycles for a self-accompanying performer reveal various psychological states of being in-between, alluding to pandemic seclusion, but also to the isolation of a resistance fighter in her prison cell. For Maria Kalesnikava.

Song cycles by Sven Ingo Koch ᵁᴬ, Ying Wang ᵁᴬ, Agata Zubel ᵁᴬ, Alla Zagaykevich ᵁᴬ, Maxim Shalygin with Viktoriia Vitrenko voice/ piano, Titus Selge scenic concept

Unfortunately, the SWR Vokalensemble had to cancel its participation in ECLAT due to Corona. The soloists of this concert have developed an alternative program with chamber music and juxtapose the two world premieres for trombone quartet with the nucleus of the originally planned choral work by Valerio Sannicandro, »Visio« for three violas. In three solo works for voice, the overtone singer Anna-Maria Hefele gives us the opportunity to discover the phenomenon of polyphonic overtone singing.

Even the strong Belarusian jazz and improv scene has left its country for the most part. Four experimental exile bands in four European cities celebrate hybrid the power of cohesion, from which the vision of a better world and a Belarus worth living in can grow.

Simultaneous concert with Macabre (Minsk/BY), Le Cru (Kiev/UA), Fantastic Swimmers (Warsaw/PL) and B.O.D. (Stuttgart/D). Eugene Buldyk Artistic direction