Photo: Astrid Ackermann

 

Ondrej Adámek – Seven Stones

Konzerthaus Dortmund, Germany


Konzerthaus Dortmund is dedicating a composer portrait to Ondrej Adámek in the 2021/22 season in the form of a Zeitinsel or Time Island. Time Islands are the Konzerthaus' format for New Music and present the portrayed composers in their entire tonal language with curated formats featuring top-class line-ups. Over the course of five days, the Adámek Time Island will include not only his main works but also projects conceived especially for the Konzerthaus, bringing the composer into direct dialogue with the audience and enabling an interactive exchange.

The highlight of the Time Islands is the German premiere of the opera Seven Stones. This work was created as from 2012 at Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, where it premiered in 2018. At the festival's annual academies, Adámek, writer Sjón, and director Eric Oberdorff met and together laid the groundwork. In the years that followed, the work took shape in congenial collaboration through improvisations, joint experimental exploration of sonic possibilities of voices and of objects, the construction of bizarre instruments and the development of a stage space. The step from a theater stage to the podium of the concert hall is now to be taken in Dortmund.

At the center here is the figure of the Stone Collector obsessed with a search for that biblical first stone. Fascinated by a seven-year delusional search leading the Stone Collector through the most diverse countries and continents as well as through dream worlds, Adámek, himself intensively involved with the sound and language of different cultures, finds an ideal field for composition. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is making the opera performance in Dortmund possible.

Due to the current situation and the associated conditions, there may be changes at short notice. For the latest information on the project please therefore check konzerthaus-dortmund.de