The Brodsky Concerts

Stirring

The actor Dirk Roofthooft and pianist and composer Kris Defoort share a fascination for the work of the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1987. Recordings have been preserved of Brodsky reading his own poems. Even if you do not understand the words you find yourself being swept along by the stirring ‘sing-song’ delivery and the rhythm and music of his language. The performance is based on fifteen of Brodsky’s poems. Dirk Roofthooft provides a context and texts linking the poems. The poetry inspired Kris Defoort to compose several piano improvisations, which he manipulated electronically and supplemented with some strings and other things. Taking the poems and this sound landscape as a basis, Roofthooft and Defoort come up with new improvisations for each concert, thereby allowing the poems to surprise them yet again, thus penetrating to the very essence of Brodsky’s poems and sharing this with the audience. Video images complete the concert.

• Defoort and Roofthooft also worked together on the opera House of the Sleeping Beauties (2009) which Defoort composed and Guy Cassiers directed; Roofthooft played the leading role.