This Friday, 17 March, Graindelavoix will be voluntarily exiled to the underground of Bozar Brussels for the Belgian première of ROLLING STONE (Antoine Brumel’s Earthquake Mass in Times of Disaster) for the Klarafestival
Join us, last tickets here!
What can art and music mean in times of disaster and crisis?
Graindelavoix consulted Pieter Bruegel (1569), who began painting grisaille (stone-colored) works in the 1560s in response to political disasters and iconoclasm, and the French composer Antoine Brumel (+1512), whose 12-part Earthquake Mass was rediscovered by Orlandus Lassus in the same period. For these artists, 'resurrection' is not an uprising, revolt or revolution, but a petrifying confrontation with the rumble of a colossal tombstone, with stone dust, rubble and a black hole. On the ruins of past and present, Graindelavoix recreates Brumel's composition, anticipated by images from the short neorealist documentary “Il Culto delle Pietre” (1967) by Luigi di Gianni, an allegory of a modern world marked by inertia and superstition. Add to the color and grit of the voices the deliberate anachronism of four wind instruments (cornetto, horns, serpent), together with the interventions of legendary Portuguese avant-garde guitarist Manuel Mota, and you get an idea of Graindelavoix’s atlas of disasters.
Graindelavoix / Björn Schmelzer, artistic direction
Teodora Tommasi, Florencia Menconi, soprano
Andrew Hallock, alto
Albert Riera, Andrés Miravete, Marius Peterson, tenor
Tomàs Maxé, Arnout Malfliet, bass
Lluis Coll i Trulls, cornetto
Berlinde Deman, serpent
Pierre-Antoine Tremblay, horn
Christopher Price, horn
Manuel Mota, electric guitar
artistic concept: Björn Schmelzer
sound concept, arrangements and compositions: Manuel Mota
(in collaboration with Tremblay, Coll i Trulls, Price and Deman)
live sound engineering : Alex Fostier
light design: Fostier, Garcia & Schmelzer
external ear & artistic advice: Margarida Garcia
production: Katrijn Degans
coproduction with Klarafestival Brussels, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent & Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen
