EstOvest
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL

EstOvest09
from October 16th to November 29th 2009

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The 8th edition of the festival EstOvest is dedicated to the exploration of diverse cultural realities and multidisciplinary forms of expression, while also reassessing the roots of modernist innovation. As always, the festival shows its commitment to contemporary issues with several commissions of new works.

EstOvest opens this year with a programme focusing on Italian and Russian futurism, an original way of celebrating the centenary of Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto devised by the writer Paolo Nori and the musicians of Xenia Ensemble. The second programme sees an exciting audio–visual homage to the surrealist experiment of Man Ray and Erik Satie, created and presented by the Ensemble Dissonanzen (Naples). A third thematic programme celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, where the internationally acclaimed soprano Rosemary Hardy joins Xenia Ensemble in a performance of Schoenberg’s ground breaking second string quartet as well as in a newly commissioned work by the young Turkish woman composer Zeynep Gedzilioglu. Another specially composed work by Maria Radeschi, the winner of this year’s EstOvest competition, is likewise inspired by the idea of the Berlin Wall as a reflection on divisions, conflicts and reconciliations, a theme in keeping with the philosophy and spirit of “EstOvest”.

The concert’s theme considers the implications of conflicts and injustice, fear and ignorance, hope and possible reconciliation that are associated with the discordant nature of a Wall built to separate people in the name of ideology. The festival continues its established practice of offering new insights into the music and instruments outside the western tradition. Returning to the Japanese theme of 2008, we welcome Andreas “Fuyu” Gutzwiller, Europe’s foremost expert of Shakuhachi (the japanese bamboo flute), presenting a programme of traditional pieces of the Kinko-school , as well as performing two pieces by contemporary composers (the Japanese Moroi Makato), and Gerald Bennett (an American resident in Switzerland). Moreover we offer programmes of music from Palestina, with the presence of Khaled Jubran, well-known as a composor as well as being one of the world’s most renowned performers of buzuq and oud. Jubran will perform a solo programme of traditional music, and with Xenia ensemble will perform new works that he has written specially for this occasion, as well as collaborating with Rosemary Hardy.

For more information, please contact g.riva@xeniaensemble.it