The website of Geneva Camerata (GECA), an ensemble that gives ‘multidisciplinary performances that merge music, dance, theatre and circus’, tells us that they are ‘proud to collaborate with exceptional artists to present performances inspired by the turbulence of our changing world,’ and that ‘this sense of vertigo, which permeates our lives, will serve as both our messenger and our guiding light throughout the season.’ Founded in 2013 by Céline Meyer and David Greilsammer (its conductor and artistic director), GECA is in fact an orchestra composed of 40 young musicians that performs music of all periods and styles.
The İKSV website informs us that in this event, members of Geneva Camerata will present ‘a unique encounter between the world of krump – a hip-hop dance style developed in the suburbs of Los Angeles – and one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Performed by the orchestra’s musicians, who dance simultaneously alongside four hip-hop dancers, this performance explores a number of current social themes such as tolerance, courage and freedom.’
The first work on the programme will be Battle Zone by the Swiss composer and trombone-player Alexandre Mastrangelo (1989-), a native of Geneva. (Quite how the players of unwieldy instruments such as the cello and trombone will succeed in ‘dancing simultaneously alongside four hip-hop dancers’ remains to be seen.) This will be followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 in D minor, Opus 47, in an arrangement for chamber orchestra by Jonathan Keren. This ever-popular symphony was originally written in 1937; after its triumphant first performance (in Leningrad that same year), it received an ovation lasting well over half an hour.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
