Professor Bad Trip Lessons I–III

The Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) is a global, non-commercial organisation with the aim of promoting, disseminating and presenting contemporary music. The Bernese section of the IGNM curates and organises concert programmes of new music in the city of Bern beyond the established for a cross-generational audience. The aim is to present programmes with music from the late 20th century on the one hand and to provide insights into current developments in new music on the other, thus presenting a broad spectrum of contemporary music. It is particularly interested in artistic border crossings and transdisciplinary concepts.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Italian composer Fausto Romitelli, Ensemble ICTUS will perform its new version of the trilogy Professor Bad Trip Lessons I-III in November 2024, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. This revised version, which primarily follows Romitelli’s notes on performance practice closely, was first performed by Ensemble Ictus at the Biennale Musica in Venice in October 2023. The ensemble is very close to Romitelli’s music and can look back on an intensive collaboration with the composer.

Fausto Romitelli began composing the first lesson of the Professor Bad Trip cycle in 1997. From the outset, the three-part work, which was to take many years to complete, was conceived as the first panel of an ambitious “psychedelic” triptych resembling an aesthetic manifesto. The cycle was inspired by Henri Michaux’s Misérable Miracle (1972), L’Infini turbulent (1957) and Connaissance par les gouffres (1961) and reflects the author’s experiences with mescaline and other drugs. The project was as bold as it was clear: the power of rock music with its saturated sounds – a whole spectrum of violence that had previously seemed impossible to integrate with the written codes of classical music – was to appear as if by magic, like a genie from a lamp, in the highly precise universe of modern music. Romitelli was determined not to make any concessions. The wild ride of Professor Bad Trip can be understood as a celebration of transgressive energy; despite its darkness, the work is bursting with ideas and breathes a youthful joy, the joy of invention, of pushing boundaries, of daring to become oneself.

Further information:
ignm-bern.com

Date

November 19, 2024
Bern Academy of the Arts, Great Concert Hall