Mensch, Musik! #8 – „Zufällig FREI“

The “now” is always different, always in flux – Bas Wiegers

Bas Wiegers is one of the most exciting conductors at the cutting edge of contemporary music with his captivating energy and great openness. As a guest of European symphony orchestras, soloist ensembles and opera houses, he confidently spans the spectrum from the Baroque to the music of today.

It is precisely this programmatic breadth that is also reflected in his work as Associated Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra – with works ranging from Haydn to Weill and Dutilleux to the world premieres of new concertos by Márton Illés and Chaya Czernowin. In the course of the 2023/24 season, Bas Wiegers also conducted subscription concerts of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for the first time; he also made his debut with the Belgian National Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (Claudio Abbado Concerto) and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In his native Netherlands, Bas Wiegers has worked with all the major orchestras. He has also made guest appearances with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Cologne Opera, Bern Theatre, Britten Sinfonia, Ensemble Modern and SWR Vokalensemble. With Klangforum Wien, whose first guest conductor he was until summer 2022, the projects AMOPERA – a dystopian ballad directed by Jan Lauwers at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl and Umbruch with Thomas Hampson based on songs by Mahler and Ives were premiered under his direction.

Bas Wiegers is often and gladly invited back. He has conducted several times at the Opéra national de Lorraine (Britten, Mozart) and at the Klagenfurt Theatre (Haas, Sciarrino) and is present at festivals such as November Music, Holland Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Prague Spring Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Ruhrtriennale and Acht Brücken in Cologne.

Bas Wiegers has worked closely with composers such as Georges Aperghis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino and Rebecca Saunders.

In the context of current projects, Bas Wiegers regularly enters the treasure trove of scores for his listeners with his podcast The Treasure Hunt and provides a very personal insight into his working process as a conductor.

Following his musical training in Amsterdam and Freiburg, Bas Wiegers initially dedicated himself to his successful career as a violinist specialising in historical performance practice. He was awarded the Kersjes Foundation Conducting Scholarship, followed by assistantships with Mariss Jansons and Susanna Mälkki at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – and ultimately the decision to concentrate fully on conducting.

His voice surprises with its bright clarity and fascinates with its intensity: Georg Rudiger has acclaimed its “radiance about which one can only marvel…” (Badische Zeitung) and Richard Lorber has celebrated its “irritatingly-beautiful, bell-clean naivety” (WDR3 Opernblog).

Soprano Philipp Mathmann is one of the most sought-after countertenors in the world today. During the course of his still-young career he has taken on numerous leading roles in highly-acclaimed productions such as Anastasio in “Giustino” (Handel), Abel in “Cain and Abel” (Scarlatti), Mirtillo in “Il pastor fido” and La Bellezza in “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” (Handel). These productions attracted national attention and were nominated for notable prizes, such as the Faust Prize and the Golden Mask Award. Mathmann’s opera engagements have taken him to the Teatro Real Madrid, the Aalto-Theater Essen, the Theater an der Wien, the Stanislawski Theater Moscow and numerous other renowned music festivals.

Mathmann does not just limit himself to baroque repertoire. In 2021/22, for example, he sang the part of the Angel at the Semperoper Dresden in the world premiere of Thorsten Rasch’s “Die andere Frau”, and the part of the Scorpion Man in Jörg Widmann’s opera “Babylon” at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. Mathmann has worked in concert with some of the most renowned early music ensembles, such as the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Concerto Köln and conductors such as Christophe Rousset, Gianluca Capuano and Diego Fasolis. His first CD (“La deposizione dalla croce di Gesu Cristo” by F. X. Richter) was released in 2017 and was followed in 2020 by his first solo CD (“Tormenti d’Amore”) which featured 3 world premiere recordings.

Gustavo Llano was born in Medellín, Colombia. He studied theatre at the EPA (Escuela Popular de Arte de Medellín, now ITM) and visual arts at the University of Antioquia before finally turning to dance. His dance teachers included Jorge Holguín, Álvaro Restrepo, Beatriz Gutiérrez, Peter Palacio, Silvia Rolz.
Since 1998 Gustavo Llano has been living in Berlin in self-exile, as he calls it. Like many other dancers of his generation, he left the country because of the violence. The final straw was the murder of his friend and teacher José Manuel Freidel, a visionary of socially critical Colombian theatre.
In Germany, Gustavo Llano first danced in Ismael Ivo’s company. Through him he met Johann Kresnik, with whom he worked for several years, first as a dancer and later as artistic assistant. With Kresnik he staged, among others, Plan Vía in Bogotá, a choreographic reflection on Colombia’s present, and Die Fledermaus for the Wuppertal Opera. His own choreographic works include Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades for the Los Angeles Opera as well as the pieces Agua, Zeitlos, Cinco Danzas Cotidianas , Nadie en el Mundo es Eterno, La Fiesta and many others, which he has staged in Europe, the USA and Latin America.
Gustavo Llano’s work is oriented towards the idea of choreographic theatre, which differs from dance theatre in its political motifs as well as its socially critical content and seeks the greatest possible expression with the simplest, most everyday means.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Renée T. Coulombe is a composer of instrumental, electronic and acousmatic works, an improvising experimental pianist and performance installation artist, and a scholar engaged at the nexus of contemporary theory, sound, and media culture. She is currently the Program Lead for the Creative Production Masters at Catalyst Institute for Creative Art and Technology, and Founder of The Willows Nest collaborative arts space in Berlin where she serves as artistic director. She is also a scriptwriter, host, audio engineer and producer for a variety of commercial clients, and runs the independent media production house and label, Banshee Media.

Inka Löwendorf grew up in Berlin and learnt about the stage at an early age at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she studied ballet. After graduating from high school, she studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. This was followed by engagements at the Staatstheater Mainz, the Berliner Ensemble and the Volksbühne Berlin. In 2009, she founded Heimathafen Neukölln, an interdisciplinary theatre in the Berlin district of the same name, together with partners. She performs and directs there.

Inka Löwendorf is fluent in Dutch, English and Spanish, but speaks a fair amount of French and Italian. She regularly records features and radio plays for Deutschland Radio, RBB and MDR, and reads audio books. She regularly appears as an actress in front of the camera for public broadcasters. She is also a lecturer for voice and breathing at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences.

Since 2007, tauchgold (Heike Tauch and Florian Goldberg) have been realising pieces at the interface between radio and stage. Their work includes social satires, historical dramas and philosophical themes. However, specially composed music always plays a central role. In 2019, their stage work “The Glassing Sea. A Narratorio for Strings and Voices”, which was created with a composition by Cathy Milliken based on the radio piece “Metamorphosen”, premiered in Munich in 2019. For “Geborgte Landschaft. A Narratorio for Piano Trio and Voices”, the composer Dai Fujikura wrote the music (2022). The English stage version “BORROWED LANDSCAPE” premiered in New York in 2023 and will tour the US from 2024. Since 2022, tauchgold have been realising the RSB series “Mensch, Musik!” as an author-director team.