Eight bridges

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Eight bridges | Music for Cologne is the name of a music festival in Cologne . It was launched in 2011 as a successor to the MusikTriennale Köln . Every year at the beginning of May it is dedicated to modern music . Across all genres, renowned artists and ensembles from the contemporary music scene as well as representatives of Cologne's independent music scene play on the stages of the cathedral city in many different Cologne venues. In June 2016, the festival was put on the red list by the German Cultural Council and classified in category 2 and thus as endangered.

concept

Eight bridges | Music for Cologne wants to convey modern music to a wide audience. In addition to concerts, workshops are organized, films are shown, exhibitions are curated, lectures are given and special offers are made available for children. In addition, the free public rehearsals are part of the concept. A free evening lounge is also part of the daily program. The abstract and symbolic title "Eight Bridges" is reminiscent of the eight bridges that span the Rhine in Cologne's urban area today and is intended to be an expression of the openness of the festival.

history

2011

In 2011 the festival took place between May 8th and 15th under the title “ Pierre Boulez - France and the Modern Age” . Around 9,000 visitors were counted at this festival debut. Right at the beginning of the festival week, Boulez himself took to the stage when he conducted the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the MCO Academy NRW in the Cologne Philharmonic . For eight days, the composer's 15 most important works were presented and modern French music played. The “Musical Walk” campaign offered the opportunity to be taken with an audio guide to eight central locations in Cologne, which are associated with Pierre Boulez, in order to learn more about his personality. A solo violin program by Michael Barenboim was performed in the storage facility for the mobile flood protection elements, and there were free “Eight Bridges” lunch concerts.

2012

The second edition of the festival was dedicated to John Cage and the music of North America. From April 29th to May 6th, 2012 around 20,000 people attended the events entitled “John Cage - America. A vision ” and celebrated the 100th birthday of the musician who died in 1992. American modern music was played in 21 venues. Together with the drummer Martin Grubinger and the organist Iveta Apkalna , the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and Jonathan Stockhammer opened the festival. In 2012 the festival announced - as in 2011 - the international composition competition for young composers. Neil Thomas Smith from Scotland and Nicholas Stuart from England won first prize; the American Jacob Gotlib came second. Events such as the literary matinee, the “musical walk”, lunch concerts and a special film program about John Cage rounded off the program. The video competition for "John Cage's Work 4'33" encouraged people to create their own version of 4 '33 "and upload it to the festival website. The theater group of the Rodenkirchen grammar school and the central band in Berlin were chosen as the winners of the competition by visitors to the “Eight Bridges” website. Under the title “A day around John Cage” on May 6, 2012, numerous works by John Cage and his contemporaries were played with free admission in the Cologne Philharmonic , in the adjacent Museum Ludwig and in the Filmforum. Chamber music and large-scale works were interpreted by the Ensemble musikFabrik , the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), members of the Ensemble Modern and the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg. Around 4500 visitors came to this event.

2013

The third edition of the festival with around 30 concerts and 30,000 visitors took place from April 30 to May 12, 2013. The focus was on the electronic music of yesterday and today as well as the work of the composer Iannis Xenakis .

2014

The fourth edition of the Eight Bridges Festival took place from April 30th to May 11th Music for Cologne instead. A century after the first use of a permanent assembly line, the festival under the title "Im Puls" got to the bottom of the contrast between the human pulse and the mechanical clock. One focus was on the composer György Ligeti , from whose oeuvre almost 30 works from the period 1948 to 2001 were performed, including by the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg under the conductor François-Xavier Roth, the Bamberg Symphony and the Ensemble intercontemporain . The thematic Africa weekend “In the pulse of Africa” presented the varieties of African music; the concert series organized in cooperation with c / o pop combined electronic music with modern music.

2015

The fifth edition of the festival took place from April 30th to May 10th under the motto “Music. Politics? ”And the question arose whether and to what extent the new music contains political acts or even becomes a political act itself. The focus was on the composer Louis Andriessen , from whom a total of 14 works from the period 1970 to 2013 were performed. a. from the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Asko | Schönberg, Ensemble Resonanz and Suono Mobile. Works by the composers Luigi Nono , Luciano Berio , Heiner Goebbels , Hans Werner Henze and Frederic Rzewski were also heard . The New York Philharmonic performed with the world premiere of Péter Eötvös Senza sangue and the Vienna Philharmonic with the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth's Masaot / Clocks without Hands . A total of 23 premieres were performed, 11 of which were hymns for a non-existent country . In collaboration with c / o pop , the artists Atari Teenage Riot , Schorsch Cameroon , Susana Baca and Ana Tijoux presented their analysis of the tension between music and politics. During the festival, British composer Rebecca Saunders was awarded the 2015 Mauricio Kagel Music Prize of the Art Foundation NRW awarded.

2016

In 2016 the festival took place from April 30th to May 10th under the motto "Music and Faith". The portrait composer was Galina Ustvolskaya, from whose oeuvre of 25 works, 21 compositions were performed. The festival venues included several Cologne churches, including the Cologne Central Mosque in the Ehrenfeld district , which is still under construction . A total of 15 world premieres were performed, including three works by the Japanese Toshio Hosokawa and “Par là!” By the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud . The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra played the German premiere of John Adams “The Gospel According to the Other Mary” on May 8th under Markus Stenz . Other composers performed in 2016 included Leonard Bernstein , Morton Feldman , Jonathan Harvey , Olivier Messiaen , Arvo Pärt , Horațiu Rădulescu , Wolfgang Rihm and Karlheinz Stockhausen . The performance of Steve Reich's “Six Pianos” in the Cologne Philharmonic received special attention : a few weeks earlier, the performance of Reich's “Piano Phases” in the same concert hall caused a stir. The carnatic singer Bombay Jayashri Ramnath was a guest from India, the Senegalese Faada Freddy presented his a cappella project “Gospel Journey” and the New York formation Zion80 impressed with their Jewish Afrobeat.

2017

The 2017 festival took place from April 28th to May 7th under the motto “Ton. Sentence. Loud. ”And was visited by almost 23,000 people. The focus should be on the relationship between music and language. A total of 13 works by the portrait composer Unsuk Chin were performed. The concerts included the WDR Symphony Orchestra , the Gürzenich Orchestra , the Ensemble Modern , the Bamberg Symphony , Das Neue Ensemble, Einstürzende Neubauten , Käptn Peng , Hannah Silva, Saul Williams , the language art ensemble sprechbohrer and students from the Cologne University of Music and Dance . In addition to the Cologne Philharmonic , the venues were the LANXESS Tower , the Theater im Bauturm and the Sartory halls .

2018

The eighth festival, which took place from April 28 to May 11, 2018, took place under the motto "Metamorphoses - Variations" and had Bernd Alois Zimmermann, who died in 1970, as the portrait composer. A total of 30 works from his oeuvre were performed, including the "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu" and - in the interim venue of the Cologne Opera , the Staathaus am Rheinpark , - the opera " The Soldiers ", which is also performed as a vocal symphony by the WDR Symphony Orchestra was played. A total of over 25,000 people attended the roughly 60 festival events.

2019

From April 30 to May 11, 2019, the ninth edition of the festival took place under the motto “Big City Polyphony”, which attracted around 25,000 visitors and portrayed the composer Georges Aperghis . The music at the festival should be heard more intensely than in the concert hall in urban areas, for example there were events in the Heumarkt underground station , on a ship on the Rhine and a skater hall in Cologne-Kalk on the right bank of the Rhine . A total of 31 works were premiered. In addition to pieces by the portrait composer, there were works by artists such as Georg Friedrich Haas , Christophe Bertrand, Gerhard Stäbler , Manos Tsangaris , Lea Letzel and Alberto Posadas.

2020

The tenth edition of the festival, which was to be held from April 30 to May 10, 2020 under the motto "Music and Cosmos", could not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated ban on events. Catch-up dates are already planned for some concerts.

Venues

The Cologne Philharmonic is the festival's largest venue. In addition, the stages of the Stadtgarten, the University of Cologne , the WDR Funkhaus, the Filmforum, the Museum Ludwig , the Alte Wartesaal, the Theater am Tanzbrunnen, raum13 - Deutz Central Works of Fine Arts and many others are used. At the “Eight Bridges” festival, concerts will also take place in the storage facility for the mobile flood protection elements.

Artistic Director

Eight bridges | Music for Cologne is a festival by the Acht Brücken GmbH (formerly MusikTriennale GmbH). The artistic direction of the festival consists of Louwrens Langevoort , general manager and managing director of Acht Brücken GmbH and artistic director of the Cologne Philharmonic, Andrea Zschunke, head of the music and radio art program group at WDR 3 , Herrmann-Christoph Müller, head of the city's music department Cologne and Thomas Oesterdiekhoff, former managing director of the ensemble musikFabrik - Landesensemble NRW e. V. and Daniel Mennicken, managing directors of ON - Neue Musik Köln eV

financing

The festival is supported by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and the City of Cologne . The festival is funded by the Kuratorium KölnMusik eV and the Kunststiftung NRW . In June 2012, the City Council of Cologne announced that the festival would continue up to and including 2015. In 2013, the City of Cologne supported the festival with 627,000 euros, and in 2015/16 with 500,000 euros each. The city of Cologne is paying around a third of the total amount. To finance the festival as a whole, the organizers are also dependent on financial support from the private sector. The main sponsor is the Sparkasse KölnBonn, while the Lanxess chemicals group is the exclusive partner. The festival also receives further funding from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation , the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MFKJKS NRW) and the Federal Cultural Foundation .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b “Pli selon” on the music of Pierre Boulez: at the end of the first Cologne “Eight Bridges” Festival , nmz .de from May 19, 2011, accessed on November 26, 2015
  2. ^ Chronicle ( Memento from December 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Achtbruecken.de, accessed on November 26, 2015
  3. ↑ Politics & Culture 4 | 16: Page 18 Die Rote Liste , accessed on June 29, 2016
  4. ↑ Eight Bridges: New Cologne Music Festival ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). koeln-allgemein.de from December 4, 2010, accessed on November 26, 2015
  5. ↑ a b State Secretary Schafer “Eight Bridges Music Festival enriches the musical landscape of North Rhine-Westphalia with an important aspect” ( Memento from May 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). Website of the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on November 26, 2015
  6. ↑ a b Crowds of spectators . Website Kölner Stadtanzeiger from May 7, 2012, accessed on November 26, 2015
  7. ^ Event calendar of the City of Cologne from April 29, 2012, accessed on November 26, 2015
  8. ^ Events ( Memento of December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Cologne Philharmonic website, accessed on November 26, 2015
  9. ↑ Over 30,000 visitors to the Eight Bridges Music Festival , website Musik Heute on May 13, 2013, accessed on November 26, 2015
  10. ↑ Special edition Eight Bridges . Website Kulturletter Köln, accessed on November 26, 2015
  11. ↑ Radiofestival 2015 , on ard.de from July 30, 2015, accessed on November 26, 2015
  12. ↑ a b Selection of funding projects 2015 . Kunststiftung NRW website, accessed on November 26, 2015
  13. ↑ Eight Bridges Archive. Website Achtbruecken.de, accessed on June 28, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Christian Bos: reparation at the open wing. Kölner Stadtanzeiger, May 6, 2016, accessed on June 6, 2016 (German).
  15. ^ Katrin Wilke: Jewish Afrobeat from New York. Deutschlandradio Kultur, May 12, 2016, accessed on June 28, 2016 .
  16. ↑ a b c Eight bridges. Music for Cologne: Archive. Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Eight bridges. Music for Cologne: Home. Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Imprint ( Memento from December 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Achtbruecken.de, accessed on November 26, 2015
  19. ^ Eight Bridges | Music for Cologne , website of the City of Cologne, accessed on November 26, 2015