A festival, everywhere

The results are impressive: 30 productions with 30 world premieres could be experienced at around 30 locations in and around Basel. As usual, decentralized, in a wide variety of spaces or outdoors - and in glorious late summer weather. Gigantic productions were paired with lively niche productions and participatory activities, but there were also frustrating idle moments. According to the organizers, the festival attracted a total of 14,738 visitors. How this figure could be determined with so many free offers remains an open question.

The Swiss Music Prize was also awarded for the third time as part of ZeitRäume. Federal Councillor Alain Berset presented the Grand Prix Music 2019 to the brothers André and Michel Décosterd, who have caused an international sensation under the name Cod.Act with their multimedia spatial sculptures that move and sound at the same time.

With this Festival not only composes and interprets, but also builds and designs suitable music for special spaces. This involves a lot of reflection on one's own work, an exchange between the fields of music and architecture and joint creativity. Let's take the 45 meter high tower as an example Pipe mill by Beat Gysin, the initiator and now outgoing president of the festival. Together with architects and musicians, he designed the experimental lightweight construction, which is based on tubes.

This "futuristic" organ, which was suspended from a crane in the open foyer of the Kunsthaus, was presented with concerts and performances. But when, according to the program, a performance was supposed to take place at 3.30 pm on Friday and a group of spectators had come to see it, nothing happened. After waiting for over an hour, the visitors were gone and there was no indication of when which performance would take place. That shouldn't happen with a major project like this.

Music is usually a spatial art, but here it is also carried out into the city, distributed among the people who are invited to participate. Incidentally, artistic director Bernhard Günther has also had great success with this "dissolution of boundaries" of new music at the renowned, once rather aloof Wien Modern festival. In Basel, spatial and musical designers are now trying to rethink together.

For the university project Sound and space In collaboration with the FHNW Academy of Music, students from the architecture undergraduate program built unconventional musical instruments made of steel, sheet metal or wood, for which specific pieces were then composed. These constructions were exhibited in the Vera Oeri Library of the Music Academy; visitors were also able to try out the instruments for themselves. At the entrance, for example, you came across the Noisy ladyan upright steel body that could be turned and struck with a foot pedal like a timpani. But there were also instruments that simply didn't work, they didn't sound. If a structure does not fulfill its purpose, why is it presented to visitors?

Statt eines Einkaufsbummels machte ich einen Hörbummel in der Stadt. Für diesmal wählte ich den Stadtteil St. Johann an der Grenze zu Frankreich. Treffpunkt für den Audiowalk des Künstlerkollektivs fuchs&flaneure war die Buvette Saint-Louis am Rhein. Dort konnte man einen Kopfhörer nehmen und einem Führer folgen, der mit seinem Mikrofon Geräusche sammelte. Eine weibliche Stimme begrüsste einen und forderte zum Streifzug durch das Quartier auf: Die Dramaturgin Milena Noëmi Kowalski hat tolle, poetisch hintersinnige und doch konkret auf das Quartier bezogene Texte gemacht. Die Mischung aus Musik, Sprache und dem real Sichtbaren ist hier hervorragend gelungen.

The old customs hall is also located in St. Johann. Master's graduates in contemporary music and improvisation presented their production here with students from the University of Art and Design Defectors - music, scenography and permanent change. Before you were allowed to enter, you put a transparent cape over your shoulders, which reflected inside. Walls covered with transparent plastic film were permanently moved on rollers and occasionally played by a performer. There were video statements by foreigners and locals on the topic of "migration", a group of students moved through the audience with their cell phones raised and making noises. One played the accordion, another the guitar, everything was electronically distorted. An original, surreal wandering for 70 minutes.

The outstandingly gigantic performances of this festival should only be mentioned here: the opening on Münsterplatz with the percussion ensemble DeciBells, the Iannis Xenakis spatial sound work Persephassa whirled around. Or the revolutionary opera, which was both scenically and musically outstanding Al gran sole carico d'amore by Luigi Nono at the Theater Basel. The grand finale was the first realization of Ivan Wyschnegradsky's visionary skylight dome project La Coupole from the 1940s. The market hall was packed for the event.