Jewish Music Night

Chamber Music Night

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.

›Music from Jewish Exile in Shanghai‹

VISUAL MUSIC NIGHT I

Three sets, ranging from experimental soundscapes and electronic compositions to hypnotizing beats, each in combination with visual forms of expression - a broad spectrum of audiovisual performance art and artistic reflection await you on the opening evening of our festival! “mirror//flesh” for trumpet and electronics questions the relationship between artist and audience and addresses self-reflection in the performing arts. The interplay of sound, space, light and choreographic elements dissolves the boundaries between listening and watching. “Resonance of Berlin”, an audiovisual homage to Berlin, uses AI-supported sound and image compositions to present an artistic ‘city map’ that captures personal and collective perceptions of the metropolis. The performance allows the audience to experience its complexity in a new way and invites them to reflect on the influence of perception on artistic creation.Istanbul Ghetto Club, a multidisciplinary Berlin music collective with a sense of humor and an erotic touch, combines Anatolian, Greek and Mesopotamian melodies with modular synthesizers, visuals and performing arts. They hide behind masks and veils, but have nothing to hide. Anatolian Acid” emerges from tradition and zeitgeist, sweeping the audience away in a live performance and inviting them to dance. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

VISUAL MUSIC NIGHT II

Our second Visual Music Night Werner-Otto-Saal offers you a poetic-synaesthetic experience in three sets. “Poème” is the debut album (2022) of the Berlin trio Reich / Baumgärtner / Pringle, who create a sound network of dense, playful communication in the rare combination of piano, violin & drums/percussion. Their unmistakable joint sound entices you to pause and listen, is multi-layered, delicate, irrepressible and concise. ChunLi Wang's visuals add another playful layer to this set, creating fluid transitions between technology and anthropology, opening up a poetic immersive world. The novel song cycle “Sing Nature Alive” composed by McIntire is based on poetic lyrics about the love of nature and the urgency of the climate crisis. Rachel Fenlon interprets it with voice, piano and live electronics, complemented by Macmillan's nature videos. Voice and piano combine with field recordings of water, nature and breathing to create a continuous dream-like texture. Moving, haunting and thought-provoking, the “songs” emerge in full form or rise up as traces, only to sink back into the blur. The second Visual Music Night ends with “Rückverzauberung”, an almost hour-long ambient trip through more than three centuries of music history: medieval lute and flute sounds interweave with baroque falsetto song fragments, bells and horns to create amorphous, abstract soundscapes. Small spinet and harp loops tumble intoxicatedly over feverishly beautiful violin surfaces. Atonality and euphony flow effortlessly into and out of each other. Voigt's principles of loops and deconstruction redefine old sound worlds. Ali M. Demirel enriches the set with his live visuals, in which the wonders of nature with their sometimes microscopic patterns are revived into abstract images.

Night of Guitars

The »Nacht Der Gitarren« brings together the world's best guitarists for a festival tour where they perform their latest original compositions and cover versions. For each tour, »Nacht Der Gitarren« presents a new line-up of guitar luminaries to create this very special evening of solo, duet and quartet performances, highlighting the virtuosity and diversity within the acoustic guitar world. The festival is exciting because not only do different cultures come together here, but younger artists also meet more experienced musicians. It is precisely this mix that makes these concerts so brilliant. Fans of the acoustic guitar always get their money's worth here, getting to know new talents or interesting established artists every time.

André Heller’s Sufi Night

André Heller’s Reflektor festival opens with an evening of spiritual music from Morocco and Pakistan. The rhythmic music of the gnawa singer Hind Ennaira from Essaouira, Morocco, in the first half of the concert is followed by the powerful qawwali of the Sufi ensemble of Fareed Ayaz and his brother Abu Muhammad from Pakistan. Listening to gnawa music, with its dynamic rhythms and chants, is a physical experience that brings both the players and the listeners to ecstasy. This ecstatic state induced through the medium of music is also important in qawwali, and is said to bring the audience and the performers closer to God. The concert begins with the powerful qawwali singing of the Pakistani Sufi ensemble led by Fareed Ayaz and his brother Abu Muhammad. The ensemble’s musical roots reach back 700 years to the tradition of Delhi’s devotional singers. In Sufi mysticism, qawwali – which is known as the »path of the heart« – expresses fervent devotion to God. The music begins with a meditative rhythm of chants, melodies and percussion. Gradually, the rhythm ramps up, reaching intoxicating climaxes that are said to lead the musicians and listeners closer to the divine. The brothers and their ensemble have been internationally known for more than 30 years, and are Pakistan’s most popular qawwal group. They are followed by the 26-year-old gnawa musician and gimbri player Hind Ennaira who is one of the few female maâlems or master musicians among the hundred or so gnawa artists in Morocco, whose musical tradition is usually passed down from father to son. As a maâlem, she – with her bassy gimbri lute – leads the gnawa ensemble consisting of dancing singers who play the castanet-like instrument krakebs.

The Jewish Song

Finnish-Swedish Moses Pergament (1893–1977) was a prominent and well-known figure in the music scene, active both as a composer and as a music critic for Svenska Dagbladet, but sadly now largely forgotten. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Helsinki but moved to Stockholm in his twenties.The Jewish Song was composed towards the end of the Second World War, while the Holocaust was still ongoing and becoming increasingly revealed. The texts are taken from two of Ragnar Josephson's poetry collections from the early 1900s: Kedjan (”The Chain”) and Jewish Poems. There, Pergament found ”the feelings of a true Jew. Not a contemptible nationalism, but a liberating sense of solidarity, even in the greatest suffering”. The work has been called a choral symphony, but in his biography of Pergament (2016), Carl-Gunnar Åhlén argues that symphonic song cycle would be a better description.This is masterful, overwhelming, and emotionally impactful music that over the years has sadly been neglected. The only recording available is from 1974 – with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, soloists, and choir conducted by James DePreist. It was also the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra that premiered The Jewish Song in its entirety in 1947, after various planned performances had been delayed for years, probably due to political anxiety – even after the defeat of Nazi Germany.Here, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir are led by Tobias Ringborg, and as soloists, we hear singers Agneta Eichenholz and the Norwegian Kjetil Støa.

The Jewish Song

Finnish-Swedish Moses Pergament (1893–1977) was a prominent and well-known figure in the music scene, active both as a composer and as a music critic for Svenska Dagbladet, but sadly now largely forgotten. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Helsinki but moved to Stockholm in his twenties.The Jewish Song was composed towards the end of the Second World War, while the Holocaust was still ongoing and becoming increasingly revealed. The texts are taken from two of Ragnar Josephson's poetry collections from the early 1900s: Kedjan (”The Chain”) and Jewish Poems. There, Pergament found ”the feelings of a true Jew. Not a contemptible nationalism, but a liberating sense of solidarity, even in the greatest suffering”. The work has been called a choral symphony, but in his biography of Pergament (2016), Carl-Gunnar Åhlén argues that symphonic song cycle would be a better description.This is masterful, overwhelming, and emotionally impactful music that over the years has sadly been neglected. The only recording available is from 1974 – with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, soloists, and choir conducted by James DePreist. It was also the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra that premiered The Jewish Song in its entirety in 1947, after various planned performances had been delayed for years, probably due to political anxiety – even after the defeat of Nazi Germany.Here, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir are led by Tobias Ringborg, and as soloists, we hear singers Agneta Eichenholz and the Norwegian Kjetil Støa.