Every city has its rhythm to daily routines. Each city forms a structure of transactions, conversations and encounters. Every city has a structure of sounds, smells, emotions and colours. The choral symphony CIRCLES translates this complex pattern into a large-scale choral performance for hundreds of participants, choirs and individuals. Composer Amir Shpilman, director Marie Bues, dancer Ariel Cohen, artists Yair Kira and Naoto Hieda and cultural manager Kerstin Wiehe develop together with up to 200 singers a ritual, a chaotic-eruptive celebration of the complex city and the people in it.
CIRCLES means above all music. The structure of this new choral music is so simple that it can be rehearsed in guided workshops with about 200 singers. The influence of the sound through the immediate proximity to the musicians will irritate the audience during the performances, as well as question their orientation in space and their role during the choral ritual.
CIRCLES is interdisciplinary and experimental, but above all, CIRCLES is a remarkable reinterpretation of the idea of space-sound and the idea of music as a community-building, but possibly also a beautifully disturbing ritual. Amir Shpilman, who as a composer and conductor is interested in the physicality of music, has around 200 singers perform together. A bird’s eye view camera transfers the changes in the concentric circle of the performers onto a building.
Amir Shpilman’s vision is to emphasize the power of collective intelligence through a large-scale composition in which voice, colour, and movement are in continuous change, and are influencing one another. Based on principles of self-organized systems and interactions between individuals, a mass swarm of rich colours and sounds, will emerge and swirl in and around the audience. CIRCLES will be fulfilled when the audience who is walking inside this swarm and being exposed to this extremely intense experience, will ask themselves: “Am I a spectator or part of the performance?”
World Premiere on October, 3rd 2022.
Contributors:
Amir Shpilman: idea, concept and composition; Marie Bues: dramaturgical advice; Ariel Cohen: choreography; Yair Kira: design; Robert Löw: scientific accompaniment; Naoto Hieda: simulator & media instruments; Kerstin Wiehe: Platform, marketing and artistic consulting; Christoph Amann: virtual instrument programming; Timo Kleinmeier: sound engineer.
Susanne Leitz-Lorey, soprano; Truike van der Poel, mezzo-soprano; Martin Nagy, tenor; Guillermo Anzorena, baritone, Neue Vocalsolisten
Rainer Homburg, Conductor
Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben, Motettenchor Stuttgart, Philharmonia Chor Stuttgart, VokalWerk Stuttgart, ofChors – feel the music, Vocalix, conTakt Chor Deufringen, Chor Once Again, ChorArt Herrenberg
Special thanks to Christine Fischer, Jakob Berger, Annika Knapp, Annette Eckerle (Musik der Jahrhunderte); Marie Bues, Martina Grohmann, Timo Kleinemeier, Max Kirks, Siri Thiermann (Theater Rampe); Festival DIE IRRITIERTE STADT, Amann Studios Wien, Akademie der Künste Electronic Studio Berlin (Gregorio Karman, Andrei Cucu, Tancredi Cottafadi), Human Factors-Programm of TU Berlin, singers Mima Millo, Cosima Steiner, Katharina Wegscheider, Alice Lackner, Katharina Heiligtag, Anna Warzinek, Goran Cah, Vernon Kirk, Daniel Castoral, Nicolas Boulanger, Eyal Edelmann, Jakob Berger, Sirje Viise, Shiran Eliaserov und Valentin Schmehl, whose voices are the basis of our virtual instrument.
Subject to change without notice.
DIE IRRITIERTE STADT is a project of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Freie Tanz und Theaterszene Stuttgart, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Produktionszentrum Tanz und Performance, Theater Rampe and the Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart in the context of TANZPAKT Stuttgart. Supported by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the special program NEUSTART KULTUR and the City of Stuttgart.
