Content

We live in a time full of contradictions, in which our belief in the changeability of the social status quo often fails due to a lack of trust in individual and collective creative forces.
With the multi-part project "Never a Breather", Ensemble Megaphon wants to challenge the participating artists and the audience to reflect on their own attitudes and encourage exchange. For questions like: What do we actually still believe in? Do we have the courage and the means to change our society? What are we prepared to sacrifice? What role can art play in this context? Is the current system of democracy still relevant and forward-looking? - space will be given through the concert experience and accompanying discussion rounds.

It is also about the relationship between artistic work and political stance: each ensemble member chooses a text that reacts to totalitarian social systems in different countries that violate human rights and freedom of expression. In a collective process, the ensemble elaborates these texts into media-based music-theatrical miniatures for live and online performances, incorporating non-musical forms of expression in equal measure. In this way, an experimental sound-space-time-light laboratory project develops, in which the functional separation between composer and performer is also questioned.

Due to the current events in Ukraine, as a sign of solidarity we will perform a commissioned composition for the ensemble from 2016 by the Kiev-based composer Alla Zagaykevych: Punktum reditum. The composition was written in response to the Maidan events in 2013 and the occupation of Krym. Unfortunately, the situation in Ukraine has not changed, but has escalated into war.

Programme

• Younghi Pagh-Paan (*1945) Flame Signs (1983) for soprano with small percussion
• Valentin Silvestrov (1937) - 28 July 1750 in Memoriam J.S.Bach for violoncello solo
• Ehsan Ebrahmi With No Laughter/ UA 8
• Grzegorz Krawczak Conductus" / Poem "Refugees " by Adam Zagajewski
• Jaroslav Graham Rough Music for Ensemble Megaphone (2022)
• Lenka Župková (*1970) The Writer's Paradox/Text: Ahmed Altan
• Younghi Pagh-Paan (*1945) Flame Signs (1993) for soprano with small percussion
• Alla Zagaykevych (*1966) Punktum reditum (*2016) for violin, piano, clarinet, live el. and video
• Sophia Körber (*1990) The unintentional walls erect unintentional borders /Text: Lara Süß
• Tatjana Prelević (*1964) Desperate Postcard (a self-reflective music performance)

Contributors

• Lenka Župková - Violin, Artistic Direction, Composition
• Andre Bartetzki - video projection, composition
• Vlady Bystrov - clarinet, composition
• Ehsan Ebrahimi - santoor, electronics, composition
• Sophia Körber - voice, composition
• Grzegorz Krawczak - Violoncello, Composition
• Tatjana Prelević - piano, composition

Programme booklet

Klangbrücken_Print_total PH _2022

Cooperation partner

Friends of New Music Braunschweig