JIMEK & HAŁAS | Ballady i Romanse
wd. 21-09-2022, 20:00
Concert
Symphony Hall
Concert
Symphony Hall
This year's edition of the MUSIC.DESIGN.FORM Festival will be opened by a unique project by Jacek Hałas and Radzimir Dębski. A harmonious combination of tradition and modernity with the use of modern technologies will be realised in two spaces. It will be a musical metaphor for the so-called rites of passage – rituals that change a person's life, striving to achieve harmony with themself and the world.
Tradition and modernity. Maturity and youth. The meeting of two seemingly different artists must have resulted in an event different from all the others. Jacek Hałas – the first of them is a recognised artist who has been searching for and drawing on traditional music in his work; musician, singer and dancer. The second – Radzimir Dębski – is one of the most intriguing and famous composers of the young generation, whose output includes both symphonic pieces and film music, as well as arrangements of hip-hop and jazz pieces.
The event they have created will not be a concert in the strict sense – we will become viewers of a theatrical show, which, combining two musical worlds and two contrasting spaces of the Philharmonic, will lead us through the traditional rites of passage.
Rites of passage, known probably in every culture, were rituals that were supposed to change a person and their status in society. They were a breakthrough in life, crossing a specific conventional boundary between the phases of life and were associated with abandoning what is old in favour of what is new. Each rite was usually divided into three stages – exclusion, suspension and inclusion, which corresponded successively to the sphere of the profane, the sacred and the profane.
Nowadays, the rites of passage have not disappeared from our lives but have only changed their nature, gaining, in most cases, a secular character. However, even as such, they take the form of a ritual in their more profound sense – be it for education, work, or everyday practices and behaviour.
In their three-movement work, Hałas and Dębski take Adam Mickiewicz's Ballad and Romances as the starting point for composing and everything that could have inspired the poet to create breakthrough literary pieces. Ballads imbued with mystery and magic, populated by nymphs and devils, presenting a folk worldview, will become the basis of a concert in which the harmony of tradition will be intertwined with the harmony of the present day. The whole thing will be a kind of rite of passage that will eventually become a musical affirmation of life.
The event they have created will not be a concert in the strict sense – we will become viewers of a theatrical show, which, combining two musical worlds and two contrasting spaces of the Philharmonic, will lead us through the traditional rites of passage.
Rites of passage, known probably in every culture, were rituals that were supposed to change a person and their status in society. They were a breakthrough in life, crossing a specific conventional boundary between the phases of life and were associated with abandoning what is old in favour of what is new. Each rite was usually divided into three stages – exclusion, suspension and inclusion, which corresponded successively to the sphere of the profane, the sacred and the profane.
Nowadays, the rites of passage have not disappeared from our lives but have only changed their nature, gaining, in most cases, a secular character. However, even as such, they take the form of a ritual in their more profound sense – be it for education, work, or everyday practices and behaviour.
In their three-movement work, Hałas and Dębski take Adam Mickiewicz's Ballad and Romances as the starting point for composing and everything that could have inspired the poet to create breakthrough literary pieces. Ballads imbued with mystery and magic, populated by nymphs and devils, presenting a folk worldview, will become the basis of a concert in which the harmony of tradition will be intertwined with the harmony of the present day. The whole thing will be a kind of rite of passage that will eventually become a musical affirmation of life.
