Calmus Ensemble

Ensemble Resonanz

Why would an ensemble that made its name performing rarities from early and contemporary music then turn to the most successful oratorio of the Baroque? Ensemble Resonanz would presumably answer, »Christmas without the Christmas Oratorio is only half the story. As often as you may have heard or played the piece, you still want to hear or play it again.« The ensemble has been performing its own version of Bach’s Christmas classic for six years now – pared down and with unconventional instrumentation, a little like a concert at home for friends. The concert hall becomes a sitting room, the musicians become a choir, and the work becomes chamber music with Baroque violas, electric guitar and vintage keyboards.

Nouruz Ensemble

Nouruz is the New Year’s and spring festival in the Persian and Kurdish cultures. The Nouruz Ensemble led by Iraqi Bassem Hawar also understands »spring« as a departure – towards exciting encounters between the musicians and their second home in Germany, and with other musical styles. In this concert, however, they focus entirely on their roots. A musical journey takes the ensemble from Basra in southern Iraq to Mosul in the north. They perform pieces from the southern marshlands and poetry set to music by Iraqi Assyrians and Arameans from northern Iraq, as well as classical Arabic maqam music from the area around Baghdad and all over the country. Bassem Hawar is a virtuoso on the Iraqi joza violin, which he built and developed himself; he founded the Nouruz Ensemble as a quartet in 2018. He combines a wide variety of musical styles with virtuosity, and is a tireless ambassador for the music of his homeland. Hawar is joined by the Iranian Kiomars Musayyebi on the delicate dulcimer santur and Saad Mahmoud Jawad, one of Iraq’s most renowned oud players. Other members of Nouruz are Persian percussionist Reza Samani, who has long had his roots in the Cologne area, and the Iraqi Rageed William on Armenia’s national instrument, the melancholy-sounding shawm duduk and the smoky-sounding flute nai. The guest vocalist is Baghdad-born Rita William, who works at the interface between Christian and Arabic singing.

Ensemble NIGHT

The landscape of Nepal stretches from tropical plains to the icy, sublime peaks of the Himalayas. Its music possesses a similarly exciting diversity. The Ensemble NIGHT brings out these hidden treasures located between rural folklore, Indian echoes and spiritual colouring. The quintet was formed in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu in 2006 by singer and multi-instrumentalist Jason Kunwar. After an initial phase as a metal band, the musicians decided to explore and preserve the cultural cosmos of the country’s more than 100 ethnic groups and languages. Accompanied by intensive field research trips to remote villages, they have developed a repertoire in which old songs and almost lost instruments come back into play. These include the paluwa flute made from fresh leaves, the three-stringed sarangi covered with sheepskin, and the Tamang stringed instrument known as the tungna. The ensemble also writes new songs based on its deep understanding of traditional music. This »new school folk« tells of spirituality as well as depicting the hardships of life in the countryside. The ensemble also documents its work on film – giving Nepal an opportunity to pass on its exciting heritage to future generations and to the world at large.

Ensemble Micrologus

The rediscovery of music from the Italian Middle Ages – over the last 40 years, nobody has clothed it in such exciting and varied sounds as the Ensemble Micrologus. In their programme »Napoli aragonese«, the musicians travel back to the heyday of courtly music in 15th century Naples, where the entire panorama of French, Italian and Spanish styles mingled. The musicians led by singer Patrizia Bovi have been performing theme programmes since 1984. In their varied concerts, it is first and foremost the music of Italy between the 12th and 15th centuries, from both the secular and sacred spheres, that they bring to life for our times. Patrizia Bovi, wind player Goffredo Degli Esposti and Gabriele Russo, who focuses on the strings, attach great importance to new interpretations: They use ethno-musicological research to develop these into singing and playing techniques and by reconstructing old instruments. The Venetian carnival, the story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian or the music in the Tuscan novels of the Trecento have already been the subject of Bovi’s many stage productions. In the »Napoli aragonese«« programme, everything revolves around secular music at the Aragonese court in Naples. In the 15th century, the court band was leading among Europe’s royal orchestras. In a fruitful exchange, they cultivated a variety of Italian, Spanish and French styles such as ballata and barzelleta, canción and roundeaux.

ECHO Ensemble

Leicht und luftig, mal tänzerisch, mal nachdenklich und wieder fröhlich klingt Poulencs Sinfonietta. Heiter muteten auch die Briefe des schicksalsgebeutelten Malers Vincent van Gogh und die Farbe Blau auf seinen Bildern an. Sie waren Ausgangspunkt für die Komposition des Briten Julian Anderson. Hingegen ist der Mörder der schwindsüchtigen Berenice in der gleichnamigen zeitgenössischen Oper vom Weiß ihrer Zähne angezogen – der österreichische Komponist Johannes Maria Staud schrieb „Berenice“ nach einer schaurigen Erzählung von Edgar Allan Poe. Finster dräut schließlich das Weltenende durch einen Kometeneinschlag in der Oper „Le Grand Macabre“ des Ungarn György Ligeti. Drei Koloratur-Arien der Geheimpolizei-Chefin aus der Oper umfassen die „Mysteries of the Macabre“, als Arrangement für Kammerensemble und Sopran. Das Echo Ensemble für Neue Musik der Eisler und die ukrainische Sopranistin Oksana Pynchuk widmen sich unter Leitung von Manuel Nawri diesem heiter-gruseligen Programm.

Ensemble Resonanz & Guests

A story about friendship and betrayal, violence and denunciation, crucifixion and violent death. Ensemble Resonanz dives into the heated events of Bach’s St John Passion and presents its own, intimate version with a chamber-music line-up. The notes remain unchanged, but there is no turba choir. Instead, a guitar and electronic continuo head off together on spheric forays.

Tenebrae – Ensemble Diderot

Musik für die Karwoche aus der Feder des böhmischen Komponisten Jan Dismas Zelenka ist eine der größten Entdeckungen des barocken Repertoires. Den Vergleich mit Bach braucht sie nicht zu scheuen. Preisgekrönte junge Gesangssolisten und das spielfreudige Ensemble Diderot machen daraus einen Hochgenuss.Mathilde Ortscheidt, Nicolas Scott und Felix Kemp gehören zu den eindrucksvollsten Talenten des Sänger-Nachwuchses. Zusammen mit dem Ensemble Diderot, einer der aufregendsten Originalklang-Formationen, lassen sie aufhorchen. Im Gepäck haben sie ein Kleinod der geistlichen Musik: Der böhmische Barockkomponist Jan Dismas Zelenka schrieb die Vertonungen der Klagelieder des Propheten Jeremias für die Dresdner Hofgottesdienste während der Karwoche. Das ist hoch expressive Musik für die Seele.

Hania Rani & Ensemble

Hania Rani is an award-winning pianist, composer and singer. Her debut album “Esja”, a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim in 2019, earning Rani four prestigious Fryderyk Awards including “Best Debut Album”, “Best Alternative Album” and “Best New Arrangement”, in recognition from the Polish music industries very own Grammys.Her follow-up sophomore album, the expansive, cinematic, “Home”, was released in 2020 on Gondwana Records and finds Rani expanding her palate: adding vocals and subtle electronics to her music as well as being accompanied by bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak. The album earned Rani another notable accolade of “Best Composer”, a further acknowledgement from Fryderyk and with Rough Trade including it in their essential “Albums of the Year”.When Hania reintroduced herself this spring with “Hello”, the preliminary taster for her new album, “Ghosts”, it most likely startled many who’ve come to love her work. Otherworldly yet upbeat, its mischievous melody, eloquent Rhodes piano, sparkling synths and nimble rhythms offered little indication of the New Classical style with which her acclaimed solo debut, 2019’s Esja, is sometimes associated. Both a welcome to Ghosts’ universe and a farewell of sorts to the past, “Hello” is a siren’s call, and, just as the album’s title suggests, over the album’s 13 tracks and 67 minutes Rani passes repeatedly and gracefully between worlds, joined sometimes by bassist and Moog player Ziemowit Klimek and Patrick Watson who breathes unearthly life into the ethereal “Dancing with Ghosts”.Rani, who grew up in Gdansk, Poland and currently divides her time between Warsaw and Berlin, is probably still best known for Esja, its instrumental piano pieces swiftly and widely embraced during the pandemic for a palliative beauty which BBC Radio 4’s Mark Coles described as “sublime and minimalist”. Her Covid era “Live from Studio S2″ performance video has now clocked up almost 6 million views. Nonetheless, she’s always embraced broad horizons, far broader than her strict, two-decade training as a pianist might initially suggest. Alongside her classical activities, most notably award-winning collaborations with cellist Dobrawa Czocher (released via Deutsche Grammophon), not to mention her first piano concerto, “For Josima”, premiered this spring, she was for a while one half of Poland’s respected alternative pop duo Tęskno. She’s also worked with other media, releasing a ‘highlights’ reel, “Music for Film and Theatre”, in 2021, and her scores include Piotr Domalewski’s “I Never Cry”, winner of the 2020 Polish Film Festival’s Best Score award, last year’s “Venice – Infinitely Avantgarde” and, coming later this year, Amazon’s “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart”. In 2022, Hania was asked by director Susanna Fanzun to score the documentary about the artist Alberto Giacometti. Released by Gondwana Records, the soundtrack was recorded in the Swiss mountains with Hania being surrounded by snow and ice which is reflected in the delicate recordings.Her interests extend, too, into the realms of art: last summer, for instance, visitors to Zodiak, the Warsaw Architecture Pavilion, are encouraged to enjoy “Room for Listening”, a sound and spatial art installation, designed with architecture studio Zmir, in which an hour-long composition is looped and streamed through 25 speakers.Presented by Ambitus

Liedstadt & Ensemble Resonanz

Mais Harb, Hêja Netirk and Julian Prégardien - three first-class singers share their favorite songs and reinterpret them together with the musicians of Ensemble Resonanz and guests. Experimental Kurdish music by Hêja Netirk meets Franz Schubert sung by Julian Prégardien. Mais Harb's Arabic songs resound with a fresh string sound. Melodies from Germany, Kurdistan, Syria, Austria and Iran combine with the support of the children's choir of the Al-Farabi Music Academy to create a genuine Berlin song recital.

Ensemble!