Commission to Oxana Omelchuk

Following the two music theater productions (Planet Globokar and How Is Your Bird?) with music by Vinko Globokar and Frank Zappa, Manfred Weissensteiner (Theater am Ortweinplatz, Graz) and the Viennese ensemble Studio Dan around Daniel Riegler are planning their third collaboration and production for young audiences. This time, the focus is less on the oeuvre of a composer and more on a topic that the artistic collective wants to approach together with the Belarusian composer Oxana Omelchuk, who lives in Cologne, and the Graz-based author Johannes Schrettle: time.

Children and young people aged 8 to 12, for whom the project is planned, are confronted with major changes in tempo. These include the transition from parental care to elementary school and from there on to the next school with all the new challenges, new friends and enemies, new environments, the first deadlines for homework and schoolwork, new daily structures, new hierarchies, speeds and much more. The complex construct of time, the different perceptions of adults and children and the resulting points of friction are appealing to find a music-theatrical translation for this. The catchwords, idioms and associative chains of thought are manifold: Killing time, passing time, winning the race against time, time pressure, close in time, simultaneous, timeless, zeitgeist, blessing time, having time, a glass full of time, time gone by, sense of time, seasons, time travel, time eater, turnaround time, measure time, stop time, pause time, please don’t steal my time, time-consuming, learning time and associated with it speed, tempo, boredom, slowness, the rhythm, the pause, the pulse, the beat, …

At the centre of the production is a strange machine whose function remains mysterious at first. In collaboration with the trombonist and instrument maker Kevin Fairbairn, a hybrid music machine – half string, half wind instrument – is made for the production. The mystery surrounding this machine and the actual time (40-50 minutes) it takes to unravel it form the central theme of the piece. And with the abstract construction of time at the heart of the story, abstract elements are also used alongside all the necessary imagery. How else can something like memory, time already experienced and time to come, a sense of time be depicted? Oxana Omelchuk’s music plays a central role in this.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation supports the educational project and the commission to Oxana Omelchuk.

Further information:
studiodan.at

Dates

November 16 – 19, 2024
Wiener Konzerthaus

December 18 – 21, 2024
April 27 – 29, 2025
Theater am Ortweinplatz, Graz