Commission to Malika Kishino

What worlds are still livable in times of territorialism, segregation, and environmental destruction? We have drifted away from paradisiacal conditions that once promised diversity and equality of opportunity. Who will be allowed to inhabit the future?

For the choreographic concert Cobalt Garden at the zamus early music festival 2026, Malika Kishino is composing a work that focuses on the longing for an earthly paradise (through order, aesthetics, power, wealth) originating from the Baroque gardens of the Renaissance. Yet their promise—and the unequal distribution of resources—evokes today’s division of the world, which increasingly separates people into those who can and cannot live there, with visible and invisible walls. Cobalt Garden is an interdisciplinary collaboration with the internationally acclaimed Cologne-based choreographer Stephanie Thiersch, her dance ensemble Mouvoir, the Cologne Vocal Soloists, and accompanying theorbo. Moving between Baroque compositions, contemporary dance, and new music, the interdisciplinary ensemble explores the question of future living spaces.

The central musical theme in Malika Kishino’s composition is the spatialization and mobility of sound: through voices, small Japanese temple bells, and theorbo, along with the sound of inhalation and exhalation, the interplay of tension and release, of pressure and liberation, of drawing in and letting go—to make the “grace” and joy of life audible within it. The foundation of the composition, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, is the Iroha song, a classical Japanese poem believed to date from the 9th century.

Further information:
zamus.de

Date

May 30, 2026
St. Michael’s Church, Cologne