music

From 2000 to 2005 Walter Hus composed his 24 Preludes and Fugues: six for solo piano and eighteen for two pianos. He played them at the Kaaistudios, together with the American pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski. Now, almost ten years later, Hus and Rzewski will be performing a selection from Hus’ Preludes and Fugues and Rzewski’s Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues.

The Brussels Brecht-Eisler Chorus is working with six other choruses and director Ruud Gielens on a major project on peace. FleeTheFrenzy! tells the story of those victims who even in current wars are often left out of the picture: deserters and conscientious objectors. The performance ends at the Kaaitheater, and is staged in the surrounding streets, whose names all refer to WWI.

We take our leave of the 2013-14 Kaaitheater season and the first edition of WSB's Studio Sessions with a wild party in Kaaicafé: Me, Myself & Wii! 

Fifth atmospheric ‘lounge concert’ by Ictus. The main guest is the marvellous composer Eva Reiter along with her Viennese colleagues Thomas List (recorder) and Theresa Dlouhy (soprano). New works are alternated with sophisticated 14th-century polyphonic music (so-called Ars Subtilior). No need for ear plugs!

Ictus commissioned five composers to write a new work: a piece for the instruments typical of pop music and with the length of a pop song, but which is most definitely not a pop song. Michaël Levinas, Georges Aperghis, Eva Reiter, Jean-Luc Fafchamps and Kaaitheater artist in residence Eleanor Bauer, together with her musical sparring partner Chris Peck, have taken on the challenge.

Drumming (1998) is undoubtedly one of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s most fascinating choreographic works: a dazzling dance set to a powerful score for percussion by Steve Reich, performed. The Ictus Ensemble bring this compelling score to life with breath-taking precision. Drumming is a stunning journey, a wave of pure dance and pure sound, a vortex of life energy.

In MCBTH, director Guy Cassiers continues his ‘anatomy of power’. Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays. The intense interaction of word, image and music reveals the cruel poetry of the play.