The Navidson Records
Interactive music theater and spatial installation for two tenors, recorder, oboe, piano, harp, electric guitar, percussion, cello, women’s choir and electronic sounds (2015/16)
6:00 hours
artistic direction: Tassilo Tesche & Till Wyler von Ballmoos
composition: Eloain Lovis Hübner, Rosalba Quindici, Benedikt Schiefer
sound design: Kristian Hverring, Kati Linek, Cyrill Lim
production management: Maxine Devaud
voices, performance: Andries Cloete, Michael Feyfar (tenor), der chor (Auður Jónsdóttir, conductor)
instruments, performance: Noémie Brun (piano), Marie-Clémence Delprat (recorder), Béatrice Gaudreault-Laplante (oboe), Katelyn King (percussion), Sibill Urweider (piano), Ruben Mattia Santorsa (electric guitar), Estelle Costanzo (harp)
guest appearance: Alexander Dawo (double bass)
outside eye, moderator: Leo Dick
performances:
May 29/30/31, June 1/2/3, 2016, Münchener Biennale, Lothringer13 Halle Munich
September 8/10/11, 2016, Konzert Theater Bern, Grosse Halle @ Reitschule Bern
Commissioned by the Federal State Capital of Munich for the Münchener Biennale 2016
The Navidson Records is an attempt to transfer a highly complex feeling into a music-theatrical topography. A feeling that consists of many feelings and has to do with one’s own past and with the strategies and longing to master this feeling and not to get lost in complexity and unpredictability. And therefore none of the six hours of each performance is the same as the others. Everything seems extremely fragile and is constantly shifting. Each spectator has the free choice to explore the rooms of The Navidson Records for themself or to be guided by one of the inhabitants or both.
Someone opens a door. Something is concealed behind it. At this moment the situation at Lothringer13 spins out of control. For The Navidson Records 18 performers and a choir emblematically develop together the concept of a labyrinth with the help of texts, music, and choreography. By means of a cross-media and extensive installation the performance examines that very moment when the situation tilts, that moment between when one feels at home and this everyday familiarity collapses. What should we do when we suddenly are in nothingness and are nowhere?
This uncanny moment can represent situations when we believe we are lost and thrown back on our own. ln a mutual performative-musical exploration the performers investigate with the audience the morphogenesis of unsafe situations. An open-work process will be selected for the production and the performance, deliberately taking into account the intermittent loss of orientation.
The constant question is: Which decisions do we have to take, when we arrive at nowhere?
