XI – ein Polytop für Iannis Xenakis

'Polytop' - many places - is what Xenakis called his Gesamtkunstwerke of sound, space, light and movement. Based on this, Kaleidoscope will be playing in the city over two days.

Two-day concert performance - July 1 and 2, 2011, Berlin

"The listener must be grabbed and, whether he wants to or not, drawn into the trajectories of the sounds. The sensual shock must become as haunting as the thunderclap or the glimpse into a bottomless abyss." Iannis Xenakis

The soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop takes to the streets of Berlin! The musicians of the ensemble leave the concert hall and play a series of concerts and performances on public squares, backyards and streets to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the Greek composer and architect Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis used the term polytope ('many places') to describe his monumental creations, in which he combined light, sound, space and movement as equal elements to create a total work of art. The project is divided into three parts. It begins with a concert at the Philharmonie, continues the next day with guerrilla concerts in public squares, and ends with the Ringpolytop on the Gleisdreieck.
July 1, 8 p.m., Concert, Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonic Hall.

XI begins with a concert at the Philharmonie in which the music of Xenakis meets works by Sebastian Claren (premiere, commissioned work), Ryoji Ikeda, Josiah Oberholtzer and Claudio Monteverdi. Xenakis' music is strongly influenced by his interest in random phenomena such as rain, a crowd of people, or a swarm of bees, from which he developed his own musical style. His compositions do not function with patterns of theme, motif, pitch, and rhythm, but rather bring forth with masses, fields, and surfaces. In this program, his music meets composers who have dealt with similar phenomena. As a contrast, short excerpts of early Baroque music by Claudio Monteverdi will be heard.

Program:
Iannis Xenakis: Syrmos, Voile, Ittidra, ST/4-1,080262, Mikka.
Claudio Monteverdi: Symphony
Ryoji Ikeda: Op. 1, I-IV
Josiah Oberholtzer: mbrsi
Sebastian Claren: Light a capella (world premiere)

July 2, 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m., guerrilla actions, various locations in the city.

The next day, the musicians* will perform guerrilla actions in central squares of Berlin in a staging by Aliénor Dauchez.

Xenakis' music reflects his experiences as a resistance fighter in the Second World War, such as the sounds of crowds or machine-gun salvos. A collage of Xenakis' scores forms the basis for the action. While the musicians play, activists build a temporary architecture that visualizes Xenakis' scores three-dimensionally. The musicians and the sounds move in a choreography in this newly defined space.

July 2, from 9 p.m., Ringpolytop, Gleisdreieck

The actions culminate in the Ringpolytop by Austrian composer Georg Nussbaumer on the wasteland of the future park at Gleisdreieck. Xenakis' concept of transforming architecture and landscape into large-scale light-sound places is extended to a city, a region: the 'many places' disappear from the field of vision and the radius of hearing.

The musicians are distributed throughout the city and are present only acoustically. Their sounds and those of their respective surroundings are eavesdropped by one cell phone each and transmitted to 15 cars. The cars move choreographed on the park at Gleisdreieck. Outside, musicians with wind instruments are positioned, enveloping the square in rotating sounds. The audience moves freely over the area.