A production by les ballets C de la B in co-production with Théâtre de la Ville (Paris),
Le Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, TorinoDanza, Sadler’s Wells (London), Stadsschouwburg
Groningen, Tanzkongress 2009 / Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Kaaitheater (Brussels)

13 and 14 August – 8 p.m., Werkstatt Bühne

"The scene is a place of urgency and the body / bodies in ecstasy," the choreographer Alain Platel writes about his new production. "One of the themes that has figured prominently in my work in recent years is that of the body in a state of hysteria. I am not referring to the medical condition of hysteria, but instead to a kind of oversensitivity to life.

Whenever words are no longer capable of expressing our deepest feelings, our body takes over. I have been working with dancers to develop a body language that is based precisely on this principle. Because that's probably what dance has been from the beginning: a physical translation of extreme emotions.

Fear of the discomfort of those who witness a body in such a state is very great. And yet I believe it's a positive experience to observe this state closely. It puts us in a position to be able to understand this very special form of behaviour, just like other forms of strange – extreme and provocative – behaviour which are all part of our human selves."

Ticket price: EUR 26

Alain Platel

The choreographer and dancer Alain Platel brings on to the stage things that don't seem to belong together, and in his choreography he repeatedly blurs the boundaries between dance, theatre, music and the plastic and graphic arts. Platel was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1956. His first training was in remedial education and for five years he was involved in teaching severely handicapped children. In 1984, he founded the dance collective les ballets C de la B with other stage directors and choreographers. He achieved his international breakthrough four years later with the production Lets op Bach. His most important works include Wolf (2003), Allemaal Indiaan (1999), La Tristezza Complice (1995) and Bonjour Madame (1993). In 2004, Platel was awarded the European Theatre Prize for life-time achievement.

"Platel combines the graphic style of social reportage with the silliness of a children's birthday party and brings together the many stories like a circus juggler" (Berliner Zeitung).

5 and 7 August – 8 p.m., Werkstattbühne

Jacob is a survivor of genocide – where and when it took place is left to the imagination of the listener. He is haunted by memories of his past, tormented by guilt at having survived, which cost other people their lives. His own mother sacrificed herself for him, and he even witnessed her act of sacrifice. Years later Jacob tries to rid himself of all his feelings of guilt. The title of the opera refers to the "thinking room" in which Jacob meets "The Guide", a being who takes him on a journey back to his childhood.

Morton Subotnick is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of electronic music in the USA. In the 1960s he had great success with his psychedelic experimental compositions. In the 1990s he was rediscovered by the Electronica movement and has enjoyed considerable popularity since then. The opera Jacob’s Room was in fact commissioned as long ago as the 1970s but was never given in the planned form on account of artistic differences; it was premiered in 1989 in a concert performance.

Now, 30 years on, the Bregenz Festival is staging Subotnick's full-length opera. For it, the director and set designer Mirella Weingarten has devised a dynamic stage sculpture which the video artist Lillevan will use as a projection screen for live images.

Ticket price: EUR 26, introductory talk half an hour before the performance begins

Morton Subotnick

The American composer Morton Subotnick (*14. 4. 1933) is not only regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music, but he has also been very much in the vanguard of multimedia art. In the 1960s he was the first composer to be commissioned to write a work of electronic music by a record company. The album that resulted was Silver Apples of the Moon; composed in 1967 using the first model of the Buchla synthesizer, the album became a bestseller and made it to the top of the US Classical Charts. In the mid sixties Subotnick worked as music director of the notorious Electric Circus, a kind of multimedia disco in which artists like The Velvet Underground and The Grateful Dead performed.

As a composer, Subotnick's chief interest has always lain in dance and theatre. His idea of theatre corresponds to that of other American artists of his generation such as Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk and Robert Ashley. In his compositions Subotnick shapes the sound within the three-dimensional space of the theatre.

Along with the world premiere of the opera Jacob's Room, two other events are on the programme. First, Morton Subotnick will give a talk about his early days in electronic music during which he will demonstrate a Buchla synthesizer built in 1961. And second, he will present some of his works from the 1960s in a laptop show with live video.

The word "foreign" denotes something we are not familiar with – something different in nature or far removed. A geographical region as well as a field of experience or expertise can be regarded as foreign or alien. Something "foreign" can be perceived positively as something "exotic", but also it can arouse fear.

The three concerts are the product of free association around the term "foreign". Christoph Stradner and Luca Monti, well known for their radical and theatrical concepts, have entitled their programme in 2010 "Suite Exotika".

The Ensemble Lux, which entranced Bregenz audiences with its extraordinary virtuosity in summer 2008, presents works by composers who live and work "in foreign lands" and they include two pieces commissioned by Art of our Times.

The ensemble oenm returns to Bregenz with a concert programme that focuses on the combination of music and video. A VJ – as outlandish for the world of new music as it is for many concert-goers – will create images, live, to accompany the music.

In addition to this concert series, the music of Austrian composers will continue to occupy a special place in the programme of Art of our Times. This year there is a concert portrait of the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud, played by the Wiener Concert-Verein.

Ticket Price: EUR 15

24 July, in the event of bad weather 25 July, Butzensee/Lech

Art of our Times begins this year with an excursion: we're going up into the mountains! A hike amid the breath-taking alpine scenery of Vorarlberg will lead to a concert in the great outdoors. The performance marks the start of the major landscape art project "Horizon Field" by sculptor Antony Gormley, which has been developed in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Bregenz and will be on view in the Vorarlberg mountains from summer 2010 to autumn 2011.

Jorge E. López's work Traumzeit und Traumdeutung ("Dream Time and Dream Interpretation") was conceived as an open-air event in a mountain setting. The venue for this performance will be the shore of the alpine lake Butzensee above the winter sports resort of Lech am Arlberg. There, at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, the participants will hear sounds that seem to be made by nature herself, played by the Zurich-based ensemble Collegium Novum. In his music, López explores the strange and inexhaustible power of nature – an invisible and occasionally threatening force. "My aim has always been to create sound colours and sensory impressions which are not audible in the concert hall," as López has written about the work, which received its premiere in 1997.

The composer was born in Havanna (Cuba) and grew up in the USA but has lived in Austria since 1991. An eternally recurring motif in his oeuvre is his experience of "wild nature". López is an artist who is willing to work in genuinely colossal dimensions and to go to the limits.

Ticket prices and details can be found in the brochure Art of our Times, which will be published in the spring.

Traumzeit und Traumdeutung

Symphonic action by Jorge E. López for instrumentalists in a mountain setting

24 July, in the event of bad weather 25 July, Butzensee/Lech

Art of our Times begins this year with an excursion: we're going up into the mountains! A hike amid the breath-taking alpine scenery of Vorarlberg will lead to a concert in the great outdoors. The performance marks the start of the major landscape art project "Horizon Field" by sculptor Antony Gormley, which has been developed in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Bregenz and will be on view in the Vorarlberg mountains from summer 2010 to autumn 2011. ]Details

Concerts

Encounters with the foreign

27 July, 11 and 17 August - 9.00 p.m., Kunsthaus Bregenz
4 August - 8.00 p.m., Seestudio

The word "foreign" denotes something we are not familiar with – something different in nature or far removed. A geographical region as well as a field of experience or expertise can be regarded as foreign or alien. Something "foreign" can be perceived positively as something "exotic", but also it can arouse fear. ]Details

Ticket Price: EUR 15

Jacob’s Room (world premiere)

Chamber opera by Morton Subotnick for four soloists, four cellos, keyboards and electronics.
Commissioned by Art of our Times in co-production with soniq performing arts berlin

5 and 7 August – 8 p.m., Werkstattbühne

Jacob is a survivor of genocide – where and when it took place is left to the imagination of the listener. He is haunted by memories of his past, tormented by guilt at having survived, which cost other people their lives. His own mother sacrificed herself for him, and he even witnessed her act of sacrifice. Years later Jacob tries to rid himself of all his feelings of guilt. The title of the opera refers to the "thinking room" in which Jacob meets "The Guide", a being who takes him on a journey back to his childhood. ]Details

Ticket price: EUR 26, introductory talk half an hour before the performance begins

Out of Context

les ballets C de la B / Alain Platel

13 and 14 August – 8 p.m., Werkstattbühne

"The scene is a place of urgency and the body / bodies in ecstasy," the choreographer Alain Platel writes about his new production. "One of the themes that has figured prominently in my work in recent years is that of the body in a state of hysteria. I am not referring to the medical condition of hysteria, but instead to a kind of oversensitivity to life. ]Details

Ticket price: EUR 26, introductory talk half an hour before the performance begins

Dear visitors and friends of Art of Our Times,

Traditionally, the programme of Kunst aus der Zeit / Art of Our Times explores the theme of the Bregenz Festival from a somewhat different angle. This summer, we examine the motto "In foreign lands" and ask what the terms foreign, alien and exotic actually signify. 

An excursion into the mountains: has the great outdoors become alien to us? Have we forgotten what it sounds like? The outdoor sculptures created by Antony Gormley stop us in our tracks and make us reflect on how we see nature, while Jorge E. López reminds us with wonderful music how extraordinary the countryside can sound.

Morton Subotnick's opera Jacob's Room, which in terms of subject matter complements the opera in the Festspielhaus The Passenger, is a work about one person's difficulties in coping with the aftermath of war and genocide. Jacob travels deep inside himself and rediscovers his own memories – the journey into himself is a journey into an unknown, foreign land. Morton Subotnick's career began at a time when the dialogue between composers and theorists of music and the emergent hippy culture was especially intense. Listening to music became a transcendental experience, a journey beyond one's consciousness into, again, a foreign land. This conception of music is evident in Jacob's Room as well as in Subotnick's pioneering composition Silver Apples of the Moon - and it will also be the theme of the concert by the ensemble oenm in the Seestudio.

In other concerts, we introduce two young composers from Egypt and India; the Wiener Concert-Verein gives a concert portrait of the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud; and C Christoph Stradner and Luca Monti present a musical soirée on the subject of exoticism.

Dance returns to the Werkstattbühne with a very unusual piece by choreographer Alain Platel, whose company les ballets C de la B is normally to be seen in large theatres. Platel's decision to return to his roots in Out of Context and to create a dance piece that makes do without set, live music or opulent costumes, was the reason for our inviting the ensemble to appear in 2010. 

The season ends with a concert by the visual artist Christian Naujoks in association with Kunsthaus Bregenz - in recognition of the fact that the borders between the individual art forms and media have long been fluid in the area of contemporary art, and that artists today regularly venture out into unknown terrain. 

I hope that all visitors to our concert series will have an exciting and enjoyable collective adventure. 

Laura Berman, artistic director of Kunst aus der Zeit / Art of Our Times

Partner:

]Feldkirch Festival
]Bahnhof Andelsbuch
]Alpinale Bludenz
]KUB
]Klangspuren Schwaz
]Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
]Art Bodensee
]Facebook

rocky roccoco

A playful voyage of discovery into the world of stringed instruments. The two musicians Rocky and Harry can't get over their surprise: they would never have dreamt of meeting guys who claim to come directly from the Middle Ages! Bach's fugues, Handel's courtly dances… In rocky rococo, sounds that are over 300 years old meet contemporary music and modern jazz grooves from Peter Madsen and Tristan Schulze. The musicians become good pals and realise the similarity in the music as a companion of emotions. Joy, unhappiness, love, but also anger and quarrelling sound very much the same today as they did back then.

Sonus Brass Ensemble | Choreography: Ela Baumann | Idea & concept: Stefan Dünser | Staging: Dan Tanson | Commissioned by the Philharmonie Luxemburg, Grazer Spielstätten and the Bregenz Festival

With: Attila Krako, Stefan Dünser, Andreas Schuchter, Wolfgang Bilgeri, Harald Schele

Recommended for the ages 6 to 13

saiten! / strings!

A playful journey of discovery into the world of stringed instruments

Who would have thought that the bow – in our ancestors' times a tool for hunting and combat – was the precursor of the stringed instruments of today? The vibration of the strings in the loosing of an arrow was harnessed and the weapon of war transformed into a musical instrument. This transformation will be reviewed before the eyes and ears of the audience by four artists playing with a variety of instruments. A musical expedition, made into a unique experience by the use of modern computer technology and dance.

Hurdy-gurdy, violin, viola, viola d'amore, erhu, kamancheh, berimbau, bow: Garth Knox | Dance: Annick Pütz | Sound installation: Robin Meier | Video installation: Jérémie Papin | Co-production of the Philharmonie Luxemburg with La Muse En Circuit and the Centre national de création musicale Luxemburg

Recommended for the ages 6 to 13

Saturday, 31 July 2010

Sunday, 1 August 2010

Monday, 2 August 2010

Sat 31 July - Mon 2 August 2010, Festival Opera House

Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) is regarded as the most independent-minded and important of Shostakovich‘s followers. His substantial output comprises ballets and operas as well as a large number of orchestral compositions and chamber music. Born to Jewish parents in 1919 in Warsaw, Weinberg studied piano initially in his home town. Immediately after his final exams the Second World War broke out. Weinberg fled from the German invasion to Minsk in the Soviet Union, but his entire family was killed by the Nazis. In Minsk he continued his studies at the Conservatory until again fleeing East from the German invasion in 1941; in 1943 he moved to Moscow where he worked as a freelance composer and pianist for the rest of his life. He became a very close friend of Dmitri Shostakovich and when Weinberg was arrested in 1953 after being falsely accused of propagating the founding of a Jewish republic on the Crimean peninsula (sic!), Shostakovich intervened on his behalf and after Stalin‘s death was able to secure his release.

In a strange land

The story of Aida, a slave trapped in a foreign land, continues to thrill visitors to the Seebühne. For the brilliant but forgotten Polish composer, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, exile in the Soviet Union meant safety from the holocaust, and the chance to compose over 25 symphonies, 6 operas and much more, although here too persecution raised its head. In the face of all vicissitudes, Weinberg maintained an unbroken stream of intensively creative music. Bregenz 2010 mounts a major retrospective of this marvellous, accessible composer: a voyage of discovery with hidden musical treasures as its goal! 

The Symposium will explore the composer‘s life and work.

Further information you find in the weinberg flyer.

Price: (incl. 2 operas, 3 concerts and the symosium programme)
400 euro or 470 euro (incl. Aida)

You see them on stage, read about them in the media, and now and again you see them out and about in Bregenz – in shops, at the market, at the open-air pool. Over the summer, the artists appearing at the festival add to the atmosphere of the provincial capital. We live next-door to the singers, actors, instrumentalists and conductors but we hardly ever get to talk to them and find out what they are like as people. The festival breakfast, organised by the Bregenz Festival and the Friends of the Bregenz Festival together with Radio Vorarlberg, offers just such a chance to get know the visiting artists. In informal interviews they will talk about their lives, productions they have worked on, as well as about what brought them to Lake Constance and what they like about Bregenz.

On five Sundays throughout the festival period, various artists will be invited to breakfast in Propter Homines Hall at the Festival Opera House. The hall will open at 9.30 and once the guests have been fortified by breakfast, the conversation can get underway at 10 o'clock.

Propter Homines Hall