Kurt Weill festival 2024
The Kurt Weill Festival starts in a few days. From 23.02.-10.03.2024, the renowned international cultural festival will take place at a total of 16 new and well-known venues in and around Weill’s birthplace of Dessau. In its 32nd edition, the festival is dedicated to women under the motto “LEUCHTEN IM SCHATTEN”, who, from the organizer’s point of view, have all too often stood in the shadow of their husbands, fathers, brothers or even social and political circumstances over the course of time.
Artists such as Andrea Sawatzki, Katharine Mehrling, Ute Gfrerer, Anna Depenbusch, Vladimir Korneev, Andrea Eckert and many more immerse themselves in the life stories of these women and bring their life’s work to the stages of the various venues of the Kurt Weill Fest 2024.
This includes artist-in-residence Liv Migdal. “Her expressive playing immerses the audience in the emotional world of the respective piece from the very first second,” says Constanze Mitter, who is the artistic director together with cultural manager Gerhard Kämpfe. As artist-in-residence, she can be experienced several times during the festival.
With the concert “Sounds of Women” together with the German Chamber Orchestra Berlin, the violinist will bring a mixture of the most diverse pieces from the pens of some of the most important composers to the stage of the Johanniskirche. Liv Migdal and her violin will also provide the musical backdrop for the reading “Love in Times of Hate” by bestselling author Florian Ilies. The texts on all kinds of romantic entanglements from the time of Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir will be given the right atmosphere.
Liv Migdal will also be performing at the 5th symphony concert of the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau on 07.03. and 08.03.2024.
But it is not only the events with artist-in-residence Liv Migdal that are proving very popular. “Many events are already completely sold out!” says Katharina Markworth, Managing Director of Kurt Weill Fest Dessau GmbH. However, tickets are still available for a few events.
Tickets are available for the musically accompanied reading “Im Hinterhaus” with actress, bestselling author and audiobook narrator Andrea Sawatzki.
The subject of the event is probably one of the most important contemporary testimonies:The Diary of Anne Frank.
Singer-songwriter Wallis Bird, born in Ireland and winner of several Meteor Music Awards, and the classical band Spark (winner of the Echo Klassik) perform works by composers and musicians such as Janis Joplin, Björk and Enya, as well as Hildegard von Bingen, Clara Schumann and, last but not least, Wallis Bird herself under the name “Visions of Venus”.
At “HIDALGO: Song & Slam”, young prizewinners dissect and rework sometimes highly controversial texts and juxtapose them with the modern zeitgeist. Pianist Rebeka Stojkoska, bass-baritone Frederic Jost and mezzo-soprano Hagar Sharvit will provide the music.
Martina Barta and her sister Kristina Barta, both born in Prague, will be playing the well-known and unknown gems of Kurt Weill’s jazz arrangements with piano and vocals at the “Starry Eyed” event. Martina Barta is certainly known to some people from 2017, when she sang the ballad My Turn for the Czech Republic at the Eurovision Song Contest.
“…und mit morgen kannst ihr mich!” is an evening with and for Katharine Mehrling (Artist in Residence, Kurt Weill Fest 2022), who slips into the most diverse characters and takes us into the moods of a Berlin night à la Weill: From “Abschiedsbrief” in Café Bauer to “Berlin im Licht” and songs from The Threepenny Opera. The delicate singer sings Kurt Weill in new arrangements specially written for her by Kai Tietje.
In his program “La vie en Piaf”, Vladimir Korneev musically resurrects the “little sparrow”, as Édith Piaf was called during her lifetime. He performs not only the great hits such as Non, je ne regrette rien and La vie en rose, but also the singer’s lesser-known pieces.
Due to high demand for the two films “Escape to Life – the Klaus and Erika Mann Story” and “Marie Curie: Elements of Life”, the organizers also organized a second screening on the respective day at 5.30 pm.
The remaining tickets can be purchased online at www.kurt-weill-fest.de, or by telephone on 0340/611907 (Mon-Thu 09.00-17.00).