Rajasthan R AJASTHAN
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Rajasthan R AJASTHAN Marc Sinan Company & Dresdner Sinfoniker An intercultural and multimedia music performance project by Marc Sinan featuring musicians, artists, ensembles and cultural institutions from Europe and India and the Roma community Rajasthan A co-production involving the Ethnological Museum in the Berlin State Museums, Germany HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts Dresden, Germany No Borders Orchestra, Serbia Orchestra Simfonica Bucuresti, Romania Pécs 2010, Hungary RADIALSYSTEM V, Berlin, Germany Rajeev Goenka Music Academy, Dundlod, India and SEE.ID, Austria Rajasthan Rajasthan “The artistic debate in my mind regarding my own cultural roots has been the focal point of my artistic output for over a decade. This has led me to develop a highly personal modus operandi in which I blend an amalgam of documentary video and sound material with my own contemporary music; a musical score which – in the best tradition of a synthesis of the arts – merges the musical, visual and narrative levels. With ‘Rajasthan’, I will once again rely on this modus operandi – but this time to aid my quest to trace the roots of the Roma people in India, while inviting a group of international artists to explore their potential and shrouded-in-myth origins in Rajasthan.“ Our trip‘s ultimate destination, the town of Dundlod, is a good three-hour drive northwest of Jaipur. Following in the footsteps of ‘Hasretim’ and ‘Dede Korkut’, ‘Rajasthan’ will lead us to the roots of Roma culture, and thereby completing an immensely successful trilogy with the Dresdner Sinfoniker. Together with the group of international musicians and artists from India and Europe – all of whom are united by their Roma lineage – we will set off on a journey to Dundlod. The protagonists in ‘Rajasthan’ are successful soloists and visual artists from a variety of genres. At the Rajeev Goenka Academy we will spend several weeks working side-by-side in the heart of Rajasthan. The group of distinguished artists will grapple with their Rajasthani origins – using musical, artistic, speculative or academic devices and documenting the resulting material in videos, sketches and audio recordings. Rajeev Goenka, a seventh-generation patron of the arts and sponsor of cultural events, will swing open the doors of his Music Academy in Rajasthan for a period of intense collaboration. In this much-mythicised home of their ancestors, I will develop a contem- porary composition – both with and for the musicians – which draws on the material collected, while simultaneously approximating the protagonists, their instruments and history in a radical and novel manner. This will culminate in a musical theatre which will be implanted as a nucleus in the ensembles of our project partners and be performed jointly in the respective independent manifestation. Marc Sinan Rajasthan Rajasthan Let the Gypsies come and blossom. We miss them. They can help us by irritating our fixed orders. They are what we pretend to be; they are the true Europeans. They do not know any borders. Günter Grass Princes amongst Men – Journey with Gypsy Musicians from Garth Cartwright, Serpent’s Trail, 2005 Rajasthan How much longing is found in be-longing? A tapestry of dreams involving research, performance, sounds, art and cinema Steeped in legend and the point of origin of the Roma people, Rajasthan is the starting point for a complex tale about identity and the sense of belonging. Transporting the trip to the stage and beyond will weave a tapestry of dreams – composed of ethnomusicological research, music, dance, visual and performative arts – with the goal of revealing the true identity of the nomads of the 21st century, of who we are. Rajasthan Depart, to arrive A journey to the essence of the myth – an intriguing clash of perspectives A group of renowned, distinguished international artists pack their bags and head off on a journey that will see them engage with the roots of the Roma people. On this field trip to India, Delaine & Damian Le Bas (GB) will design the stage set, Iva Bittová (CZ) will improvise with folk musicians and others will dance or write. Maybe the ensemble will embrace other media and new sources of inspiration. The show will revolve around the sense of openness and tension that arises when markedly different experiences, questions, media and ways of expressing oneself come together. The stage will represent a safe forum in which the artists will be free to argue about concepts such as judgement and shame or perception and reality – a place where clichés, prejudice and opposing narratives enthusiastically collide. Rajasthan Rajasthan A no-holds-barred, across-the-board exchange of ideas An intercultural, interdisciplinary panorama Symphony orchestras from Romania, Germany and practically every country that constituted the former Yugoslavia, along with prestigious venues and cultural institutions from all corners of Europe and India, will use ‘Rajasthan’ as a vehicle to examine the concept of belonging, while ensuring that their unique personal experiences are mirrored by the production. Meeting and debating with members of the Roma community in their own country, along with considered reflection of the respective situation, is an essential component of the outreach programme. Rajasthan Bringing the audience and artists together Eye-to-eye with the general public Taking to the stage in at least four European countries, the performances will be supported by a series of interactive and participatory fringe events. Formats such as flashmob solo performances – virtually merged to form a concert – school workshops and various discussion platforms are designed to dissolve the boundaries between the podium and the audience, thereby triggering an interest in Roma issues, and the artistic depiction thereof, among the general public. The production will be based on the outcome of the ‘lab’ held on-site in Rajasthan. Building on this, Marc Sinan will join forces with the ensemble to create a multimedia, musical and performative kaleido- scope. The ethnomusicological field recordings from the research trip to India will be intertwined into the contemporary musical score by the composer, and will reappear as a video installation during the show. However, the on-stage video installation will encompass much more than just live music and audio- visual recordings. In fact, the theatrical narrative will involve an interweaving of fact with fiction, auto- biographical with academic, news with oral history. By melodiously delving deeper and deeper into Roma heritage, one of the most pressing and contentious questions of our time will become ever more apparent: What connects us as members of the human community? Rajasthan Rajasthan Marc Sinan is a guitarist and composer. He has made guest appearances at many renowned festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Istanbul Festival, the Istanbul Jazz Festival, the Enjoy Jazz Festival, the Tonlagen Festival, the MaerzMusik Festival at the Berliner Festspiele and at the Haendel Festspiele. In addition to solo concerts and chamber music projects with partners such as the Julia Hülsmann Trio, Jörg Widmann, the Turkish percussionist Burhan Öcal and the Iranian Kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor, Marc Sinan has also appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra. With his own ensemble, the Marc Sinan Company, he has since gone on to produce much-acclaimed projects with a contemporary, intercultural and multimedia theme. His project ‘Hasretim – Journey to Anatolia’, which premiered in October 2010, was awarded the ‘Welthorizont’ prize by the German UNESCO Commission. In 2012, Marc Sinan was awarded an artist-in-residence scholarship by the German Foreign Office for the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul. Most recently, he worked on ‘Dede Korkut’, an ambitious musical theatre for orchestra, video and contemporary dance. ‘Dede Korkut’ marked a continuation of his close collaboration with the Dresdner Sinfoniker. This project first took to the stage in February 2014 at the Festspielhaus Hellerau and at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, received remarkable enthusiasm by the media. For 2015/16, he is working on the ‘Komitas’ project for the Gorki Theater, a production which revolves around the life of the Armenian composer and musicologist Komitas Vardapet, and on the ‘Aghet’ project which deals with the genocide in 1915 of Armenians in Turkey. Rajasthan The Dresdner Sinfoniker are widely regarded as one of the leading symphony orchestras for contemporary music. As an European ensemble based in Dresden, they have been honoured with several awards, such as the UNESCO Special Award and the ECHO Klassik prize. Thanks to their interdisciplinary, transnational projects – motivated by the desire to trigger dialogue and an exchange of views – they have established an enviable international reputation. The members of the Dresdner Sinfoniker are drawn from practically every renowned orchestra in Europe. Under the tutelage of their artistic director Markus Rindt, who together with Sven Helbig founded the Dresdner Sinfoniker in 1997, a rotating line-up of musicians regularly joins forces on a project-by-project basis. They achieved worldwide prominence in 2003 with Torsten Rasch’s prizewinning rescoring of the Rammstein song ‘Mein Herz brennt’ (Deutsche Grammophon). Teaming up with the Pet Shop Boys in 2004, they performed their new soundtrack for Eisenstein‘s silent movie ‘Battleship Potemkin’ live at Trafalgar Square, which for the first time in its history was cordoned off for a concert. The German-Mexican co-production ‘Codex Dresdensis – Concert at the End of Time’, which involved a musical exchange among equals with the indigenous Maya culture, saw them travel to Mexico in 2014 for a guest performance. In 2015, they stage ‘Aghet’, a Turkish-Armenian-German concert project dedicated to the memory of the genocide inflicted on Armenians. The Dresdner Sinfoniker toured the West Bank in 2013 with their ‘Symphony for Palestine’. During the ‘Erste Ferndirigat der Welt’ (World’s First Remote Conducting) in 2008, Michael Helmrath led the orchestra in Dresden while situated on the banks of the River Thames in London.