East meets West at the Morgenlandfestival
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A new Silk Road: what could be more synonymous with the exchange between Orient and Occident? Under the name "The New Silk Road", the Oriental Festival brings together musicians from Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and China. One of the artists performing at the event is Kazakh singer and dombra player Ulzhan Baibussynova. The dombra is a Kazakh two-stringed lute -
Wu Man: she is a world-famous virtuoso of the short-necked pipa lute and is considered an ambassador of Chinese music. She has already been nominated five times for a Grammy and performs with the Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Mas Silkroad Ensemble, among others. Together with Wu Wei, a master of the Chinese sheng mouth organ, she has developed a programme especially for the Morgenlandfestival -
Morgenland All Star Band: the musicians of the Morgenland All Star Band took to the stage together for the first time in 2012. The group unites musical personalities of the Middle East with local jazz musicians like Frederik Koster. Traditional Kurdish music meets Uighur funk rock from northwest China or jazz from Azerbaijan. Their concert in a VW factory hall is lit by light artist Philipp Geist -
Andy Spyra's "Hate and Hope": Andy Spyra, born in 1984, is one of Germany's most sought-after contemporary photographers. He is best known for his pictures from crisis areas. At the Morgenlandfestival Spyra is showing pictures from Afghanistan under the title "Hate and Hope", which he himself describes as "a personal place of longing and hell at the same time", where he came up against the "limits of his own understanding of culture" -
The Poetry Project Berlin: as part of the award-winning Poetry Project, young, unaccompanied refugees between the ages of 13 and 18 wrote poems about their experiences – about the reasons for their flight, their view of Germany and the Germans' view of them. The poignant readings take place in their respective mother tongues and are translated live -
Gurdjieff Ensemble & Hewar: the Syrian ensemble Hewar and the Armenian Gurdjieff Ensemble will present two new works commissioned especially for this project. Their programme also includes sacred and secular music from Armenia, compositions by Hewar as well as traditional music and improvisation. The concert is a homage to the friendly relations between the two countries and a bid for lasting peace