vodeon is the winner of the Bavarian Artists’ Advancement Award (Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis). The group interprets music as an innovative formation of soloists with an ever-changing lineup. Their joy in finding new expressive possibilities combined with their broad horizons spark collaborations with artists of all genres — from instrumental music to dance to drama. Conductor Clayton Bowman and singers Berthold Schindler and Hana Katsenes make up a core trio. Around this core they bring together groups of artists which correspond precisely to diligently designed concert programs. Despite this remarkable versatility, each project includes vodeon’s unmistakable thumbprint: the highly artful performance of vocal music with the aesthetic of the solo voice. In the space between solo and tutti, individuality and voice blending, con and senza vibrato, the ensemble finds its characteristic sound.

Influenced by the various artistic biographies of the musicians, vodeon’s repertoire has but one criterion: regardless of style, era, or language, it must be music into which the artists can breathe life, and by which the audience can be moved. Their quest for unheard programs has brought vodeon to partner with eminent artists such as the singers Anna-Lena Elbert and Israel Martins, the pianist Amy Brinkman-Davis, the poet Fee Brembeck, the baroque orchestra Concerto München under the direction of Johannes Berger, and the composer Johannes X. Schachtner.

… i am no poet

A multifaceted cross-disciplinary performance, inspired by Mozart

vodeon will perform at Würzburg’s Mozart Festival on June 1st at 11:00 am.

Tickets & Info here!

In 1777, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father:

I cannot write poetically: I am no poet.
I cannot divide phrases so artfully that they give light and shadow: I am not a painter.
I cannot even express my sentiments and thoughts through gestures and pantomime: I am no dancer.
But I can do it through sounds: I am a musician.

And it’s true: Mozart was a musician. And so vodeon presents his sacred music in what seems like a traditional way—simple, songlike, for solo voices SATB, in classical concert attire and with piano.
But doesn’t his music also feel poetic? We explore this by creating a contrafactural reinterpretations of Latin texts—such as those from the Mass—as commissioned works for the librettist, allowing the poet to lay his own thoughts as new lyrics under the influence of Mozart’s music.

Finally, vodeon believes that his music also shimmers with color and even dances:
Two dancing painters will, over the course of the performance, create their own stage design live—painting the set with brushes and interacting in gesture and movement with Mozart’s reimagined works.

At the start of the performance, only the sound of five musicians fills the otherwise empty stage. By the end, we will all have arrived somewhere else—at a place glowing with color, moved by the musician, poet, painter, dancer: Mozart.

Performers:

• Camilla Saba Davies, Soprano

• Hana Katsenes, Alto

• Berthold Schindler, Tenor

• Georg Gädker, Baritone

• Nathan Harris, Piano

• Anima Henn & Cristian Cucco, Dancing Painters

• Clayton Bowman, Artistic Director

• Richard Friedrich Schwartz, Libretto

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