CULTURE

MaerzMusik—Festival for Time Issues Opens This Friday

MaerzMusik, which this year runs from 19-28 March, is organized by the Berliner Festspiele. It has evolved from a festival for contemporary music to a "festival for time issues," dedicated to exploring the phenomenon of time in its socio-political, philosophical, and artistic dimensions.

Svetlana Stepanova

Photo: Berliner Festspiele, Philippe Rebosz

The opening day project “Environment” is a child of the pandemic: PH Ø NIX16 and the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN) from Bolivia spent several months in a lockdown at the Rheinsberg Music Academy, creating experimental films and a multimedia stage performance.

SAVVY Contemporary collaborated with the Egyptian-American composer, an electronic music pioneer, musicologist and teacher Halim El-Dabh and will present a series of projects with his forgotten works.

The New York collective Bang on a Can is presenting a 4-hours live concert as part of their project “Marathon,” streamed live from homes and studios of the artists.

A French sound pioneer Éliane Radigue conducts a 3-hour sound meditation “Trilogie de la Mort,” which will be streamed live as a binaural audio from the Zeiss Planetarium, followed by a film about the artist.

The grand finale of MaerzMusik, TIMEPIECE, with a 27-hour speaking clock, will be performed live by Berlin-based artists on the Grand Stage of Haus der Berliner Festspiele and accompanied by musicians from around the world. Overall, combining more than 100 participants, it is a highpoint of the program and indeed an artistic manifestation of solidarity in times of pandemic.

You can access the digital festival edition with the festival pass, which is valid for all events for the entire duration of the festival. It’s completely free, or with a donation amount of your choice you will help support the performers and keep art alive in these difficult times.

Full festival program is available here, and you can also follow its FB page. We only wish we had all the hours in the day to experience every show of this stellar program, truly a curatorial and artistic achievement of our times.

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