Commission to Clara Iannotta at the NOW! Festival

The NOW! festival sees itself not only as a platform connecting cultural institutions, but also cultural workers in the Ruhr area and beyond. The cultural wealth of the Ruhr area is both an opportunity and a challenge.

The NOW! 2025 programme sets several priorities that attempt to capture the broad spectrum of musical engagement with our present: new orchestral, ensemble and chamber music, electronic and interdisciplinary music, influences from sophisticated pop music and jazz. In addition to the Philharmonie Essen, the Folkwang University of the Arts and the Museum Folkwang, the Zollverein Foundation and Pact Zollverein will once again be among the venues in 2025, on the site of the former colliery and current UNESCO World Heritage Site, Zeche Zollverein.

The festival will focus on the composer Clara Iannotta, who combines many aspects in her music: finely interwoven sound fields, form as a tangible sound development, new and unusual sounds through the use of small, partly self-developed additional instruments. An extremely differentiated, finely tuned sound cosmos opens up to the audience. All of Clara Iannotta’s string quartets will be performed by the JACK Quartet, her orchestral work Moult will be performed by the Basel Sinfonietta and her ensemble piece memory jolts will be performed by Ensemble Resonanz. Flashes of pink in the brain will be performed by Ensemble Resonanz. Clara Iannotta is also composing a new violin concerto for Carolin Widmann, which will be premiered at NOW!

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is supporting the commission to Clara Iannotta as well as the festival.

Further information:
theater-essen.de/philharmonie

Dates

October 25 – November 9, 2025
Various locations, Essen