Atem
Musical-theater choreography for a bassoonist
Length: 20 min
© João Luiz |
Maurício Kagel wrote for the opening of Atem in the International Course of New Music the 26th of August of 1970 in Darmstadt : "One of my neighbours is a retired wind player. Making reeds for his colleagues is his main activity these days. To test the quality of the reed, he always plays the same short sequence of notes (florid/fast/florid/pause/florid). His son also lives in the same house, he is 30 years his junior and also a musician. He plays the trombone". From this image Kagel creates Atem, a composition for a solo wind musician, recorded sound effects and stage actions: a musician enters the stage, sits down and plays. Of the notes he tries to play, only a few come out clean. A monologue with himself begins, where the text is made of sound instead than words. At the end the musician gets old, incapable of playing without distortion, and then dies. The choreography is based in this score, but taking theatrical freedom, with most elements of the original score present and presented in a new way, explored as a dance-theatre piece and visually restricted to a square of light.
Choreography Music Performer Light design Studio recording Production |
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