Composition Commission issued to Caspar Johannes Walter

Il Profondo, Basel, Switzerland

The title of the project “sono un fumo” is part of the song "S'io son pazzo", the core of the slapstick performance of the music ensemble Il Profondo for whom Caspar Johannes Walter has written a composition. Arising here is a symbiosis of Italian music from the 17^th century and the new work.
On stage singers and musicians luxuriate with historic instruments of Baroque music. Madrigals sing to lunacy in all its facets. A ball begins rolling – the lunacy reaches the musicians. A chain reaction is set in motion that sabotages the performance of the members of the ensemble. These are both protagonists and victims of the entanglements. In this way the songs to lunacy give rise to a real, slapstick-like, self-destructive series.
Caspar Johannes Walter’s music here interrupts, supplements and comments upon Baroque music over and over. “The inner emotional turmoil and extravagance of musical theater in the Early Baroque already appealed to me very strongly. [...] Especially when pain, hopelessness or frenzy was to be expressed in the compositions the composers used [...] the ultra-chromatic frictions of the smallest intervals [...] of the extended mid-tone moods of that era,” explains the composer who was supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
The project aims to use scenic performance to build a bridge between historic performance practice and New Music.

May 14 – 16, 2016                                                                                                
Radialsystem V, Berlin

June 3 – 5, 2016
Gare du Nord, Basel

Further Information:
www.ilprofondo.com