Insight Sessions
The public will have a second chance to follow the evolutionary process of a new work of music theatre. In association with Kunsthaus Bregenz several open sessions will be held to offer unique Insights into the creative world of the composer and the artists working on the project with him.
After the successful world premiere of Zesses Seglias’ opera To the Lighthouse in summer 2017, the Opera Workshop now continues with round two. What form the resultant opera takes, what its content is and what sound worlds open up before the audience once the several-year-long process is finally completed, will be worked out in many sessions of intensive discussion between the artists involved. The composer engaged for the new Opera Workshop is Alexander Moosbrugger. Born in the Bregenz Forest region, Moosbrugger has lived in Berlin since 2001 and has worked a number of times already with visual artists. Both as organist and composer he exposes his audiences to a wide musical spectrum that often incorporates sounds from outside the familiar framework. Listening becomes part of the compositional process. Moosbrugger makes plentiful reference to the music of past centuries, out of which he often develops a new musical tuning system.
Alexander Moosbrugger studied music at Feldkirch Conservatoire and the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, supplemented by studies in philosophy at Vienna University. His works are performed by highly regarded ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, österreichisches ensemble für neue musik, ensemble recherche, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Arditti String Quartet and Quatuor Diotima. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and grants in recognition of his work.
Starting in spring 2018, Alexander Moosbrugger will share his ideas, thoughts, challenges and doubts with the public over the next few years. In his work on the project he will be joined successively by other artists, who will be introduced during Insight Sessions at Kunsthaus Bregenz.
21 November 2018 – 7 p.m., Kunsthaus Bregenz
A new opera is being created and the general public is invited to follow the process. Ideas are generated, rejected or developed. The artists involved are in intensive communication with each other over several years. Bregenz Festival in association with Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) arranges several open sessions every year offering an insight into the creative process.
The current project brings together composer Alexander Moosbrugger, who was born in Bregenz Forest and lives in Berlin, and the artist Flaka Haliti. Haliti was born in Kosovo and lives in Munich. Her work has been exhibited at mumok in Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, Kunsthalle Lingen, ZKM Karlsruhe, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig, and at the biennales in Moscow and Venice. In spring 2018 she designed the KUB Billboards display in Bregenz.
This Insight session explores Flaka Haliti's work. What is her way of working? What does she hope for from the collaboration in the Opera Workshop? What ideas has the book Alexander Moosbrugger suggested as the basis for the opera inspired? It's surely one of the most fascinating and enigmatic books in the world, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, probably written by the Dominican Francesco Colonna and first printed in Venice in 1499. The work plays with several languages, takes the reader inside colossal buildings and parks that are also illustrated in numerous woodcuts contained in the book. The central character Poliphilo's love for Polia also describes the love for language itself and for the mystery of our perception, in which dream and reality coalesce.
4 April 2018 – 7 p.m., Kunsthaus Bregenz
Insight session no. 1 will present the composer and his working style, primarily in past collaborations with visual artists. Moosbrugger's diverse sound world will be illustrated by the performance of two works. Members of ensemble plus will perform Skalen, Texte, Maß, composed in 2009. Alignement promises to be a particularly interesting experience: listeners can move around inside the piece, which uses loudspeakers to project Moosbrugger's and Thomas Kessler's reworking of music and texts that came into being during a lesson that English composer Thomas Attwood took with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A piano piece by Mozart will be played by Johannes Hämmerle.