Let’s get straight to it, before we divert you
Tickets: Adults 350 CZK | students and seniors 250 CZK
Concerts: Catch Trio + POING: 600 CZK | 500 CZK
Festival pass 1 100 CZK | 1 000 CZK
Multifunctional hall DOX+
Poupětova 3, Praha 7
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Rolf-Erik Nystrøm – saxophone, Frode Haltli – accordion, Håkon Thelin – double bass
One of the best Scandinavian ensembles for contemporary music, the Norwegian trio POING is composed of musicians who move lightly between the club scene and the prestigious concert halls of Europe, Asia, and the US. They’re at home in notated music as well as improvisation, and they enjoy collaborations with musicians from around the world, e.g. Iran, India, Nepal, the Faroe Islands, Bulgaria, Peru, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, or Japan, who have a background in folk, popular, or experimental music. Since starting out in 1999, POING have premiered more than a hundred new works and collaborated with some of the most important contemporary composers including Simon Steen-Andersen, Bent Sørensen, Terry Riley, Rolf Wallin, Michael Finnissy, or Helmut Oehring. In Prague, POING will offer a representative selection from their diverse repertoire: two pieces by Norwegian composer Maja S. K. Ratkje, who is known in our lands mostly as a vocalist and performer, a work by one of the most important Danish composers, Bent Sørensen, inspired by a novel by Tomas Espedal, and samples from the work of two composers virtually unknown in our lands, Martin Rane Bauch and Sachiyo Tsurumi.
Maja S. K. Ratkje: essential extensions
Maja S. K. Ratkje: Rondo – Bastard – Overture – Explosion
Martin Rane Bauch: Vela
Bent Sørensen: Suite from The Four Seasons – world premiere
Sachiyo Tsurumi: SUSHIYA 009
About the festival:
This year will see the tenth edition of the Contempuls Festival. Although this first jubilee might make us prone to stock taking, we won’t be looking into the past. As is tradition, the festival will present the newest – and, in our opinion, the most interesting – items from the world of contemporary music. Among the pillars of the dramaturgy is the Czech premiere of a collaborative, hour-long stage work by composer Martin Smolka and director and librettist Jiří Adámek, Vor dem Gesetz (Before the Law), based on the eponymous short story by Franz Kafka. It was created in close cooperation with the German ensemble ascolta, operating on the boundaries of concert, theatre, and instrumental opera. As usual, the programme also includes world premieres. Jakub Rataj’s IOI for Trio Catch is a festival commission, while Japanese pianist Satoko Inoue will play an unperformed part of Luboš Mrkvička’s piano cycle For the Piano. Another first performance will be a suite from The Four Seasons, composed for the Norwegian trio POING by Danish composer Bent Sørensen. Like in previous editions, there will also be classic works from the second half of the 20th century: Jo Kondo’s Sight Rhythmics, Morton Feldman’s last work for piano, Palais de Mari, or Georges Aperghis’ Trio for clarinet, cello and piano. As for the character of the concerts, the tenth edition will be extraordinarily diverse. The spectacular performance by ascolta is a sharp contrast to the introverted recital by Inoue, the concentrated playing of Trio Catch continues in the best traditions of ensembles specialising in new music, while POING represents a more relaxed and experimental approach.
Keep exploring
Commander
The unique production combines a physical theatre performance with live music and a film starring child actors of Farm in the Cave studio to communicate an urgent, yet widely overlooked, topic – the online radicalisation of youth.
Thin Skin
A performance by established circus acrobat Eliška Brtnická and her hypnotic production Thin Skin at the interface of movement installation and contemporary circus in the spaces of the DOX Centre.
Thin Skin
A performance by established circus acrobat Eliška Brtnická and her hypnotic production Thin Skin at the interface of movement installation and contemporary circus in the spaces of the DOX Centre.
Commander
The unique production combines a physical theatre performance with live music and a film starring child actors of Farm in the Cave studio to communicate an urgent, yet widely overlooked, topic – the online radicalisation of youth.
Czech Hero
Satirical physical theater production Czech Hero by the theatre ensemble Farm in the Cave, which focuses on the contemporary and pressing topic of disinformation and political marketing. Movement, words, live music, dynamics, energy, exaggeration. All this in the DOX+ hall.
Franz Kafka's Drawings
Eminent Kafka scholar Andreas Kilcher will present drawings by Franz Kafka discovered in 2019 in the context of Kafka's biography and art history as well as his literary work and his impressive book, which has been translated into ten languages to date.
Klangforum Wien II.
The second evening of the Prague Offspring series presents premieres of five new works by Czech and Slovak composers written for Klangforum Wien, commemorates the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, and climaxes with the Czech premiere of Nether, a dazzling work by the composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders.
Klangforum Wien I.
For the third time, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art will be the venue for Prague Offspring, a Prague Spring Festival concert format dedicated to the latest in contemporary music. This will be last time that Klangforum Wien will be appearing in the role of ensemble-in-residence.
Contemporary writer in Europe
How do contemporary authors perceive their position in a Europe that is being transformed under the increasing influence of populists and threatened by the Russian imperial war in Ukraine? What to write about, and how, when facing the diminishing ability of readers to focus on extended texts, as well as decreasing book sales?
