Festival theme: Light!

Can we hear light? Warm light? Cold light? The night? Kaija Saariaho felt the connection between sounds and light directly and was fascinated by both. In “Arch of Light,” one of her best-known works, the northern lights were the source of inspiration; in the piano trio “Light and matter,” the continuous transformation of light on the glittering leaves in contrast to the static tree trunks in Morningside Park in New York. Physically, light and sound waves are closely related. Brendan Champeaux would like to transfer the physical quality of light waves with their sub-spectrums to his composition. Unai Erkola Etxabe, on the other hand, in “what shines beneath” refers to bioluminescent creatures in the deep sea that are able to produce light themselves in order to orient themselves.

Some cinemas are in Germany still called »Lichtspiele« which translates to »Light plays« – thanks to a cooperation with the Kölner JazzHaus e.V. initiative and their NICA Artists funding program for outstanding musicians from North Rhine-Westphalia, we can present four historical black-and-white silent films with new music in the city garden this year. Darkness is the counterpart to light and in his project »Nature«, KMRU contrasts massive electromagnetic soundscapes with more familiar and earthy natural sounds. It invites us to rethink what technology actually is and how it changes our perception of reality. Eivind Buene also thinks that we can learn if we »listen to the dark night« talking about his three-part piece »Lessons in Darkness«. An darkness that is highly metaphorical when Georges Aperghis dedicates a »Selfie in the Dark« to his late wife Edith.