Commissions to Milica Djordjević & Elena Mendoza

The Ensemble Ascolta will perform new works by Milica Djordjević and Elena Mendoza in two transdisciplinary staged concerts. The concerts open up and utilise spaces of memory: memories, traumas and questions of identity are translated into an immersive, transdisciplinary whole using musical theatre and spatial sculptural approaches.

Elena Mendoza and director Matthias Rebstock transform Fabio Morábito’s story El balcón into a musical theatre piece for and with the Ensemble Ascolta: two boys experience a traumatic event, but their memories contradict each other. The piece explores memory, identity and manipulation. The theme is realised musically and visually by an ensemble divided into two spatial parts, with the musicians performing in front of video screens. Music and language reflect changing perspectives, while video projections show childhood scenes and fragmented adult memories that shift into one another like mirror images. The spatially divided ensemble gradually dissolves until finally all the musicians stand at the microphones and instrumental sounds merge with electronics and fragments of speech.

Personal experiences of war have had a formative influence on the work of Serbian composer Milica Djordjević; her music becomes a space for remembering fears, losses and the longing for peace. She sees climate change as a sign of a destructive relationship between humans and nature. The central symbol is the firefly – fragile, threatened, yet a light of remembrance. Together with light artist Dunja Kostic, she has conceived a staged concert with a spatial sculpture in which sound, light and audience merge. Inspired by research into musical reception and concert formats, the audience becomes part of the performance, free to position themselves and interact. New social and aesthetic spaces of experience are created.

The commissions to Milica Djordjević and Elena Mendoza are made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
ascolta.de

Dates

February 5, 2027
Theaterhaus Stuttgart (Eclat Festival)

May 1, 2027
Saalbau Witten (Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik)

September 10, 2027
Szentrum, Schwaz (Klangspuren Schwaz)

January 21, 2028
Silent Green, Berlin (Ultraschall)