Thieves, dreamers, dancers

4.10.-8.10., Graz

Centred on an unconventional ball, musikprotokoll spans a bridge from yesterday into tomorrow with numerous composition premieres.

musikprotokoll turns fifty this year. To celebrate this year’s birthday, we are venturing a tongue-in-cheek step back in time: the Vienna RSO is set to play some old-school “ball” music in the Stefaniensaal at Grazer Congress. Visitors can shake a leg to some “Advanced Dance Music” composed by Johanna Doderer, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Johannes Kalitzke and many others.

Aside from this, we are staying firmly in the present musically: the large-scale world premiere of a composition by Peter Jakober kicks off a series of (world) premieres. Performers include Ensemble PHACE and Studio Dan, Quatuor Diotima, ensemble zeitfluss, and exceptional British double bass player Barry Guy. Stefan Fraunberger and Andreas Trobollowitsch represent the “SHAPE” platform – a project of the ICAS festival network co-founded by musikprotokoll ten years ago – with performative installations and ritualistic concerts. A project shared with the Austrian Cultural Forum New York takes place on the stairs of the Stadtwerke-Haus in the centre of Graz: fifteen Austrian musicians perform a tribute to figures closely associated with New York.

True to the central theme of steirischer herbst in 2017, retrospective views, premonitions and departures into the unknown are also the inspirations for musikprotokoll, with its own deliberately high-spirited title: “Thieves, dreamers, dancers”. In other words: we take pleasure in stealing from the past for our future.

Direction: Elke Tschaikner (AT)
Curated by von Susanna Niedermayr (AT), Christian Scheib (AT), Elke Tschaikner (AT), Fränk Zimmer (AT/LU)

Produced by steirischer herbst, ORF Radio Österreich 1, ORF Landesstudio Steiermark.
In cooperation with Kunstuniversität Graz, Ö1 Kunstradio, Deutschlandradio Kultur – Hörspiel/Klangkunst, CTM Festival, SHAPE – Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe, ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, EUNIC, Holding Graz, fluxguide, Akademie Graz, Designforum Steiermark, AVL Cultural Foundation, Goethe-Institut, SoCCoS – the Sound of Culture, the Culture of Sound Initiative. The project “Homages” is supported by AKG Acoustics.