Marc Blitzstein, Cathy Milliken, Jocelyn B. Smith

Moderated concert in German as part of bauhaus music 2024

You will hear:

• Mark Blitzstein: Parabola and Circula (excerpts)
• Cathy Milliken: Songs from Driving with Fatima, performed by Jocelyn B. Smith

The festival kicks off with a sensational discovery: While researching musical life at the Bauhaus, scholars recently unearthed the 1929/30 avant-garde opera “Parabola and Circula” by the American composer Marc Blitzstein. It was supposed to debut at the Bauhaus theatre in Dessau, but the performance was ultimately cancelled. At the opening of the “Bauhaus Music” festival at the temporary bauhaus-archiv, audiences will get to hear excerpts of the opera for the very first time. Inspired by Blitzstein’s occupation with Constructivist Art, “Parabola and Circula” tells the story of a romance between a square and a dot, accompanied by many other geometric shapes. Marc Blitzstein, along with Kurt Weill, is one of the most influential composers of anticapitalistic and antifascist theatre of that age.

The 2017 radio play “Driving with Fatima” by composer Cathy Milliken transports listeners to modern-day South Africa. The piece is dedicated to the writer Fatima Dike who grew up in the Langa Township where she lives again today. On a drive through Langa, she relates stories of home and exile, modernism and tradition, which Cathy Milliken intertwined to create a radio play. The singer Jocelyn B. Smith, who performed the vocals, will sing songs from “Driving with Fatima” live during the lunch concert.

Direction: Michal Friedländer
Host: Kai Hinrich Müller, Cathy Milliken, Karl-Heinz Steffens

Free of charge. Limited number of seats. Registration requiered. Please register here.