AMAZONAS
Music theatre in three parts
Overall project
Artistic production: Peter Ruzicka, Peter Weibel, Laymert Garcia dos Santos
Advisors: Bruce Albert, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, Siegfried Mauser
Project initiative: Joachim Bernauer, José Wagner Garcia
Thanks for their hospitality and commitment to all the residents of the village Watoriki, especially to Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (shaman and president of Hutukara Associacao Yanomami) and Lourival Yanomami (shaman and head of the village), to the shamans Ari Pakidari Yanomami from Ajuricaba, André Yanomami and Levi Hewakalaxima Yanomami from Novo Demini, Isaias Yanomami and Manoel Yanomami from Toototobi, Geraldo Kuisitheri Yanomami (social worker and camera man,Toototobi) and Dário Vitório Yanomami (teacher and treasurer of Hutukara Associacao Yanomami, Boa Vista).
1. TILT
Music: Klaus Schedl
Text: Roland Quitt (after Walter Raleigh)
Director: Michael Scheidl
Set and costume designer: Nora Scheidl
Video: Bernd Lintermann
Dramatic advisor: Roland Quitt
Lighting designer: Norbert Joachim
Sound: Paolo Mariangeli
Composition commissioned by the City of Munich for the Munich Biennale
2. A Queda do Céu (The Fall of the Sky)
Music, samples: Tato Taborda
Text: Roland Quitt
Conception: Tato Taborda, Roland Quitt
Director: Michael Scheidl
Set and costume designer: Nora Scheidl
Video: Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta
Dramatic advisor: Roland Quitt
Lighting designer: Norbert Joachim
Sound: Alexandre Fenerich, Andreas Simon
Composition commissioned by SESC São Paulo and the City of Munich
The second part of „Amazonas – Music Theatre in three parts“ is partly based on the book “La Chute du Ciel” by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, published by Editions Plon (Paris) in the Collection Terre Humaine.
3. Amazonas-Conference. In expectation of the efficiency of a rational method for a solution to the problem of climate change
Concept, text, and director: Peter Weibel
Music and sound designer: Ludger Brümmer, ZKM | Institut für Musik und Akustik
Video: Bernd Lintermann, ZKM | Institut für Bildmedien
Media set designers: Nikolaus Völzow, Manuel Weber, Matthias Wölfel, Martin Schmidt
Electric Fish: José Wagner Garcia
Project management: Christiane Riedel
Dramatic advisor, projekt co-ordination: Julia Gerlach
Sound director: Sebastian Schottke
Musical director: Heinz Friedl
Performers (among others): João Cipriano Martins, Nuno Dias, Moritz Eggert, Katia Guedes, Sven Hussock, Christian Kesten, Mafalda de Lemos, Phil Minton, Christian Zehnder, Jochen Strodthoff
piano possibile
Ensemble Moderno de Lisboa
Co-production: Münchener Biennale, Goethe-Institut, ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, SESC São Paulo, Hutukara Associação Yanomami, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (Lissabon)
In collaboration with Opera Days Rotterdam and Netzzeit (Wien)
Funded by: The German Federal Cultural Foundation, The Culture Programme of the European Commission, Deutsche Bank, Fundacao EDP
The development of the project was funded by PETROBÁs/ Cenpes (Rio de Janeiro).
Thanks to Hamburg Süd for the transport to Sao Paulo.
Media Partners: ARTE, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Antena 2, RTP
Further information on the project www.amazonas-musiktheater.org
Tickets: € 20,–
Reduced rate: € 10,–
Online ticket sales: www.muenchenticket.de
World premiere:
Saturday, May 8, 8:00 p.m.
Additional performances:
Sunday, May 9 to Wednesday, May 12, 8:00 p.m.
Reithalle
Project talk and composer forum:
Amazonia and music theatre. A challenge
Welcoming speech: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Goethe-Institute
Part 1
Panel discussion with Bruce Albert (anthropologist), Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (shaman, spokesman of the Yanomami), Joachim Bernauer (project curator, Goethe-Institute) and Laymert Garcia dos Santos (sociologist)
Moderation: Christoph Bartmann
Part 2
Composer forum with Klaus Schedl, Tato Taborda, ZKM
Moderation: Peter Ruzicka
Friday, May 7, 5:00 p.m.
Goethe-Forum, Hilmar-Hoffmann-Saal
Admission free
Ecologically and culturally the Amazon is a core area in regard to the fate of the earth. The music theatre project that the Munich Biennale is realizing with international collaborative partners unfolds the aspects of the “Amazonian pain” (Peter Sloterdijk) and the Amazon region’s history using every possible media of modern music theatre. Three relatively independent sections represent three different perspectives on the history of the Amazon:
1. The distant perspective: the perspective of the Europeans, the “discoverers” and conquerors, a look back with the knowledge of the ensuing results. The libretto uses a montage of excerpts from Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Discovery of Guiana” from 1596. The themes are paradise, fear of nature, battle, and gold – especially gold. The composer Klaus Schedl transports the texts into a sound landscape, which simultaneously allows one to experience the distance and contemporariness of the report from ages past.
2. The up-close perspective: the perspective of the indigenous people, the Yanomami, one of the largest groups of Amazonian peoples who were able to preserve their traditions, and the perspective of their representative, the shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. The creation myth of the Yanomami will be told, which demands the sense of hearing as the main source for orientation. The Caucasians appear as the incarnation of Xawara, the evil spirit that brings disaster, in a trinity as explorers, missionaries, and gold diggers. The music, which steadily becomes more and more important than the lyrics and integrates moments of indigenous traditions, is composed by the Brazilian Tato Taborda.
3. The future perspective: the third section is a multimedia project created by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) Karlsruhe, conceived by Peter Weibel and composed by Ludger Brümmer. One evening – three totally different sections – three dimensions of one subject, a subject that will decide part of the world’s future.
Klaus Schedl, born in 1966, studied with Hans-Jürgen von Bose in Munich. He has composed solo works, chamber music, vocal music, orchestral music, and music theater works. He is a co-founder of the ensemble piano possible, and during the many years he has been the artistic director of this ensemble he has received numerous awards, including the City of Detmold’s composition prize; a grant from the GEMA Foundation; and the Music Grant of the City of Munich in 2009. He taught from 1997 – 99 at the conservatories Coimbra and Viseu in Portugal. Afterwards, he lived in London, and later he lived and studied under a grant from IRCAM in Paris. Since this time he has been working intensively on the possibilities electroacoustic music offers. A core element of Schedl’s work is a contemporary music that expresses itself in an immediate manner and has an associative as well as an emotional effect.
Tato Taborda, born in 1960 in Curitiba, Brazil, took classes with Helmut Lachenmann and Dieter Schnebel after he finished his studies with Hans Joachim Koellreutter, Esther Scliar and R. Murray Schaffer at the Cursos Latinoamericanos de Música Contemporânea. In 2004 he finished his education with a doctor’s degree; his thesis was on the relationship between bioacoustics and polyphonic thinking. Taborda, who founded a New Music ensemble in 1980, has received commissions for compositions from, among others, the Donaueschingen Festival; WDR; the Berliner Festspiele; and the São Paulo Biennale. He is a curator for several New Music festivals.
The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe is a worldwide unique cultural institution. It has consistently created a network bringing together the arts and the new media. It unites the fields of research and production, exhibitions, events and documentation under one roof: the Media Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Media Library, the Laboratory for Antique Video Systems, the Media Theater, the Institute for Visual Media, the Institute for Music and Acoustics, and the Institute for Media, Education and Economics enable the ZKM to develop interdisciplinary projects and international cooperations. Under the direction of Peter Weibel since 1999, the ZKM closely and constantly analyzes the new media in theory as well as in practice in order to be able to react to the fast developments of information technology and the permanent change of social structures.