It explores, breaks down barriers and changes perceptions of contemporary music: Sacrum Profanum returns with more surprises!
The visit by the Icelandic collective Bedroom Community, two performances by Mike Patton and works by John Zorn are the highlights of this year’s festival. Between 1 and 8 October, we will go on a musical journey through exuberant avant-garde, indie classical and the most fascinating compositions of the last century.
Whale song
There is an island around which whales love to dance and sing. Perhaps that’s the secret of Iceland, which continues to inspire many artists. The country, numbering just 300,000 inhabitants, is the home of the Bedroom Community – a forge of liberated composers. Two of them – Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly – have created music for films such as Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark and the Oscar-winning The Reader.
The concert titled Whale Watching will be an opportunity for the artists of the Bedroom Community to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their independent label. The concert on 1 October features a Polish accent: as well as Muhly, Sigurðsson, Nadia Sirota and Daníel Bjarnason, we will also hear the Spółdzielnia Muzyczna ensemble specialising in performing the latest, cutting-edge music, and the soprano Barbara Kinga Majewska.
Star-studded
The face of this year’s festival is undoubtedly Mike Patton, best known as the frontman of Faith No More. The American musician, personifying artistic freedom and imagination, performs twice. We will hear him on 7 October accompanied by the violinist and composer Eyvind Kang with material from the 2004 album Virginal Co-Ordinates, refreshed and expanded especially for the festival. The stage also welcomes Polish artists: expert in avant-garde electronics Mirt (synthesisers and field recordings) and Anna Mamińska and Hubert Połoniewicz on Middle Eastern tambours. And of course there will be a classical instrumentarium from the perfectly tuned Sinfonietta Cracovia orchestra.
On Saturday 8 October, closing Sacrum Profanum, the charismatic vocalist presents his interpretation of Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II, written as part of the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth. Patton’s baritone, spanning an impressive six octaves, is the perfect candidate for speaking, shouting, mimicking and singing everything included in the Italian composer’s score.
Mixing sounds
If John Zorn were a chemist, he’s bound to have discovered a few new substances by now. The American saxophonist and composer has been experimenting with jazz, noise, classical, film, and Jewish music for several decades. The project Painkiller provides the perfect insight into his open mind; he works alongside Mick Harris, the former percussionist with Doom and Napalm Death, and Bill Laswell, bassist and guru of ambient music. Zorn is also a workaholic: the list of records where he’s credited as an artist or composer is long and impressive, and he has produced over 2000 albums! Although the New York musician doesn’t appear in Kraków, his musical talent will be easy to notice. On 5 October, Zorn’s chamber works written between 1991 and 2013 are performed by the American pianist Stephen Drury and the British Arditti Quartet. And that’s just a prelude of things to come during future Sacrum Profanum festivals.
Musical visionaries
Of course Sacrum Profanum is first and foremost a review of the most important contemporary musicians. The protagonists of this year’s festival are three 20th-century composers, each of whom left an inedible mark on culture. Pierre Boulez, who passed away earlier this year, was a true musical anarchist, a radical modernist, an outstanding conductor and animator of cultural and musical life. Over 40 years ago he founded the Ensemble intercontemporain, which pays homage to the master on 3 October. And of course we couldn’t miss out Karlheinz Stockhausen, an artist who shifted the boundaries of what we think of as music. His 1970 work Für kommende Zeiten is created anew for each performance during meetings and preparations of the performers. The musical experiment, focused on intuition and imagination and based on verbal suggestions and instructions written as short texts and aphorisms, resounds on 8 October during the first half of the finale concert. The finale concludes with the 30-minute Laborintus II by Luciano Berio, who is regarded as one of the greatest experimental musicians of post-war avant-garde. We will also hear his compositions on 2 October during the concert Acousmatic, performed by the Ensemble Musikfabrik. Two pieces by Berio are juxtaposed with works by the young composer Marcin Stańczyk: some drops… written especially for the festival, and Blind Walk which the audience experiences while wearing blindfolds.
Life after life
Some prophesised its death, but it’s alive and doing rather well. Opera has survived its darkest years, and today it is thriving. Last year’s stage adaptation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was just a taster of what’s to come: this year’s programme features three operas! The first is an unusual multimedia attempt at showing Polish people a true portrait of themselves. Opera About Poland with music by Artur Zagajewski set to excerpts from documentaries by Piotr Stasik premieres on 8 October. The opera for children also resounds the same day: Korall Koral is an onomatopoeic project prepared especially for kids under three-years-old! A couple of days earlier, on 6 October, Emily Hall’s Folie à Deux with a libretto by Sjón takes on a more classical form; we will see Mira Calix, favourite of Kraków’s audiences.
Beauty of noise
His father specialised in film and his mother was a ballet dancer, but the son took his own path and today he is an award-winning author of operas and enthusiast of radical noise music, which he used to perform alongside the sadly departed Zbigniew Karkowski. On 4 October, Kasper T. Toeplitz presents his composition written especially for the festival. The concert Bruit also features the first ever performance of an orchestral composition by Karkowski at a contemporary music festival in Poland. Until now, Polish fans have only been able to listen to his radical music in electronic versions or performed by solo instruments. The orchestra taking up this challenge is the zeitkratzer ensemble from Berlin. The formation of seasoned improvisers and uncompromising proponents of cacophony also presents a work by one of the forefathers of the Polish avant-garde Witold Szalonek, and a composition by the ensemble’s artistic director Reinhold Friedl. Fans of garbled sounds and exuberant racket should also attend the performance by Maja Ratkje and Agata Zubel the day before.
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Events of this year’s Sacrum Profanum are held at ICE Kraków and the Małopolska Garden of Arts. The festival club is W Remoncie, a part of the Tytano complex, hosting free evening events opening and closing this year’s festival. “The festival continues to evolve. The 14th Sacrum Profanum is a cycle of fascinating concerts and several accompanying events including discussion panels, exhibitions and meetings with artists. All this comes under a single banner: Sacrum Profanum 2016, which transforms Kraków for eight days,” promises Izabela Helbin, director of the Krakow Festival Office. (Artur Jackowski, "Karnet" monthly)
