SWITCHING TONGUES

A devised work of music theatre collaboratively developed by an international group, on the theme of switching between languages

OVERVIEW
From 20-24 March 2018, Jeffrey Young (violin, USA) will come to Graz to work with Schallfeld Ensemble members Manuel Alcaraz Clemente (percussion, Graz/Spain) and Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka (contrabass, Graz/Germany). They will spend four days collaboratively creating a 20-30 minute piece of music theater, and they will perform a concert showcasing the new work. The artists will discuss the work in advance by phone/Skype, but the majority of the artistic work will be developed during the rehearsals in Graz.

The theme of the work will be the switch that occurs in the minds of multilingual people when they move between languages. This can be explored in its literal sense, since each of the collaborators speaks a different native language (English, German, Spanish), but all three can communicate in both English and German; these and other languages spoken by the participants (also including French, Polish, Chinese) may be woven into the piece, through texts created in Graz or chosen in advance. It can also be used as a guiding metaphor in the work’s development, including through switches between musical languages – the collaborators are conversant in classical, rock, and experimental styles, among others – and by breaking the subject down to examine related themes including reinterpretation, transformation, alienation, the relationship between language and music, the politics of language, electronic mediation between languages, language and nationalism, the workings of the brain, and more. In our fractious times, we believe a project that examines what unites and divides us is not only artistically rich but necessary.

The three main artists are alumni of the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland, which has brought them together for various projects. Jeffrey and Manuel have been working over the past year as members of Lucerne Festival Young Performance to develop a new piece for young audiences called NOMOZART, in which six musicians play their instruments, move, and speak on stage. In early March, they will tour NOMOZART to Philharmonie Luxembourg and six cities in Switzerland. Margarethe and Manuel play together regularly as members of Schallfeld Ensemble, the Graz-based group founded in 2013 by Margarethe and other former members of the Academy of Klangforum Wien. Jeffrey brings to the collaboration more than a decade of experience as a member of New-York-based experimental collective thingNY, with whom he has created four works of experimental music theater. In September 2017, Jeffrey organized a similar workshop to create a new staged piece followed by a concert in Frankfurt with members of Mobile Beats Ensemble. Margarethe is also a writer and researcher, currently working as a PhD candidate at the KUG Graz on a project focused on listening in contemporary music theatre.