Highlights

At the center of this music-visual performance were Sebastian Tarbuk and Eva Fritz, joined by a special member of the ensemble – academic painter Petra Šabić, who painted live on plexiglass.
Transparent. Monochrome. Black and white.

The program featured selected works for bassoon, mostly by living composers; for centuries, the bassoon had been primarily tied to an orchestral role, and only in the 20th and 21st centuries did it experience a stronger emergence as a solo instrument.

For most of the concert, the painting responded to the music—the brushstrokes arose as an echo of sound and movement. However, in the central part of the evening, the situation reversed: in an improvisation to video, the surprise guest, Mexican double bassist Ivan Cruz-Contreras, responded to the visual material. The musician then “read” the image, following the frame, the rhythm of the editing, and the atmosphere. The relationship between sound and image became bidirectional, and who was leading whom was no longer entirely clear…

Between the pieces, short interludes appeared: jokes, black-and-white film clips, including a scene from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Humor was not merely relief, but commentary. One could ask whether art had once been more politically courageous, and whether today we were truly freer—or merely convinced that we were.

PROGRAM:

Roger Perrin (1962): Seven Advanced Bassoon Duets: Two German Bassoonists Walk Into a Bar

Philippe Hersant (1947): Hopi, for unaccompanied bassoon

Dai Fujikura (1977): Following, for solo bassoon

Free improvisation on a video: Double bass solo

Konstantinos Sifakis (1994): Sisyphus, for bassoon and double bass

Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025): Duo-Sonata, for two bassoons

Outro: Whiskey Bar Dream, for video and electronics