Presenting the Programme for moers festival 2019 - Moers Festival

Whitsun, June 7th to 10th, 2019
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Press Release:

Presenting the Programme for mœrs festival 2019
Moers | Saturn, 11.04.2019
Wild, free and strong-willed – hand-picked, unexpected and transgressive.
mœrs festival has been confounding expectations when it comes to music since 1972 and stands as a promise of the
untamed transformative potential that lies in waiting outside of the mainstream. Now, for its 48th annual edition, mœrs
festival is demanding that we all “double our efforts!”

We’ve definitely doubled down where effort is concerned and there’s no doubt we won’t be giving you a festival that
you emerge from sedated and totally sorted with all loose ends neatly tied. With our experiments, focal points,
statements, prison breakers, pirates and companions, mœrs represents a steady and firm “on the contrary!” in a
confusing world that urgently needs utopias and dreams.

Let’s start from the ending:
Companions. The 2019 edition of the festival will conclude in double quadrophonic glory on the grounds of the Schloss-
park with La Colonie de Vacances, one of a total of seven French ensembles performing over the four long Whitsun
weekend days in Moers. These include Breton bagpipe player Ervan Keravec, who explores the full potential of his
urban pipes and discovers new bourdon frontiers in the process. Or Die Hochstapler, who will join accomplice Ikui
Doki in inciting the Lower Rhine region’s Composer Kids to reach brave new musical heights. Abacaxi’s audio particles
travelling at the speed of light, BaKos’ minimalist groove-heavy rhythmic worlds within worlds – the scene in France
is rich and courageous and we’re looking forward to featuring it!

Focal points...every festival has them somehow of course. We’re operating on the assumption that the “Pyongyang
Focus” will fall through again this year, in spite of powerful encounters and mutual curiosity...but hope springs eternal
and we’ll just have to wait and see! Our insane “Japanese New Music Festival” feature even manages to subvert
mœrs festival’s nutty standards with trash, anarchy and humour – nine performances in four days! On top of that,
we’ve got the auto-tune pop deconstructivists of Tokyo’s Yasei Collective and the frequency fanatic Toshimaru
Nakamura. And then: São Paulo! We’ll be seeing merry Tom Zé with eyes wide open riffing on woke notions. The
co-founder of tropicalismo is no less the rebel at a ripe 82 years of age. Then there’s spoken word poet Rodrigo
Brandāo, political, unwavering. No wonder, when we look at the worrying shifts in Brazil. We’ll also encounter Mariá
Portugal from Quartabê, and finally the pièce de résistance and departure point for all of the promising developments
in the megacity: Metá-Metá and the Clube da Encruza. They’ll give the Japanese a run for their money as they overrun
Moers with their absurd sambas and experiments.

Statements. Sure, we’ll go on the record: Analogue technology sounds better! And – although the bands’ names may
not be etched into this year’s poster, they would certainly co-sign this sentiment. For instance, there’s the live world
premiere of Anguish (featuring Mats Gustafsson and members of Dälek) with their dystopian depths, or EX EYE
(featuring Colin Stetson), whose power and virtuosity are much better served by a sound left unsmoothed. Electronic
artist Andrea Taeggi will also pay us a visit with three ARP synthesizers from the Pre-Cambrian Era in tow (for
“The Third Eye Squeegee”, a co-production with Willem-Twee Studios in ’s-Hertogenbosch). We’ll be hashing out a
host of issues, like whether music is the most important thing, or sound, or light, or insane soloes: our “discussions”
series is all about Moers as a fitting and special place for focussing and reflecting. We don’t aim to stifle expression
from any quarter: whether it’s in our press conference, on our poster, in our stage design and of course within the
festival programme itself, we want our audience, our artists, our industry guests and our partners to feel free to share
what’s on their minds. But if you are feeling burnt out from the lively discourse, you can grab an aqua noodle and head
to the Aktivbad pool for a passive night soak during a special underwater concert (so don’t forget your suits and
towels!).

But be on guard for pirates! Serbian buccaneers are setting up their kafana in the Festival Village, where they’ll be im-
provising their centuries-old songs in the evenings. On board: captain Hayden Chisholm and his Jewish-Indian-
Yugoslavian troupe from Belgrade’s Dorçol district. And beware of wandering into one of the six conspiratorial mœrs
sessions organised by uncompromising jazz escapee Jan Klare. Nothing is safe (or sacred) in such surroundings with
all that constant diving into the deep end. Some of Klare’s fellow fugitives are so young and reckless that they don’t
remember a thing and simply start to let loose without warning, like London’s black midi, Canada’s Crack Cloud, the
Killing Popes (DE/UK) or Širom from Slovenia. Others for their part (like the members of the dreaded “Filmclub
Klappe”) only hijack moving pictures or invent their own: the Belgian Flat Earth Society are creating a new soundtrack
for Ernst-Lubitsch’s silent film classic “The Oyster Princess”, Frank Niehusmann is paying tribute to the end of the
coal mining era with his imposing “Untertagemusik” and Korhan Erel is teaming up with live animator Malte Jehmlich
to create tone poems to the ghost in the machine...

A whole lot of experiments. In Moers, we don’t do our cooking prep or catering à la carte. Our journeys only rarely
lead us to the places where all the agents and programmers (and the many sausage party seekers too) already are
anyways. No, we actually go out into the field and look. “We” means all the musicians, ethnologists, musical malcon-
tents, nerds and sound enthusiasts on our team and in our orbit... Sometimes we fail – and sometimes we come back
arms piled high with gifts, exclaiming “We have absolutely got to get these folks onstage at Moers!”

So it is that we do indeed have a number of exclusive and singular constellations in store for you again this time out:
the first encounter between Marshall Allen (ts), Rodrigo Brandāo (spoken word), Toshimaru Nakamura (elec) and
Günter Baby Sommer (dr) will be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Another such brilliant collision is the Moers Meeting
featuring Peter Evans (tp), Phil Minton (voc) mit Atsushi Tsuyama (b) and Tatsuya Yoshida (dr).

And special projects: thanks to the friendly support of Kunststiftung NRW, we have been able to assemble bold
line-ups like this year’s “GLOBAL IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA”. Here ten musicians from nine countries and four
continents will come together for a week of rehearsals before celebrating their world premiere in Moers. Similarly, the
“MOERS ABSTRACTIONS”, an original mœrs festival concept, could only have been realised with the support of
Kunststiftung NRW. Inspired by Gunther Schuller’s legendary “Jazz Abstractions” LP, artistic director Tim Isfort en-
couraged Vince Mendoza to write a composition for two exemplary musical entities: the Ensemble Musikfabrik NRW
and the WDR Big Band will be departing from familiar terrain to embark on a musical adventure together with soloist
Joshua Redman …

Angelika Niescier is returning to Moers with her New York Trio. 2008’s popular improviser-in-residence will be
encountering the Trondheim Voices – new sonic textures are sure to emerge. The current (12th and counting)
improviser-in-residence Emilio Gordoa will present his M0VE Quintet, specially conceived for the festival, and can
also be heard underwater as well.

And of course, our on-going examination of the legacy of the terms “jazz”, “avant-garde” and “free improvisation” will
be omnipresent as usual, whether live (for instance on your radio in WDR3 Hörfunk on 8 June at 20:00 with DBLW -
Boulez Materialism - Dell, Brecht, Lillinger, Westergaard), in colour (almost all of the concerts from the festival hall or
festival village will be streamed live by ARTE and available as video-on-demand for the following six months in the arte
media archive). Then there are the many solo performances by diverse artists (including Colin Stetson, Yegor Zabelov,
Sein Hla Myaing …) presented at atypical or unpretentious spots, or our concerts featuring young groups from Austria
(chuffDRONE), Belgium (MDC III), England (Ill Considered) and a whole lot more ...

Last but not least, we have arrived at the beginning: we will be opening the 48th Whitsun festivities (under the best
of weather conditions of course) with a cathartic prostration to a giant. In a collective psalm, four protagonists from
NYC will call on us to Scatter the atoms that remain!
And maybe just maybe all that effort could prove effortlessly effortless after all...!?

mœrs festival is made possible with the generous support of the German Federal Government Commission for Culture
and Media (BKM), the State Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, the City of Moers as well as
Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturraum Niederrhein e.V. and Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse am Niederrhein.
Media partners are ARTE Concert and Kulturradio WDR3.

You can find all further details regarding our liberating products, as well as photos, links and tickets, by visiting our
website:
www.moers-festival.de

Press contact:

Christina von Richthofen & Nicola Oberlinger
press relations

mœrs festival (07.-10. Juni 2019)
artistic director: Tim Isfort
post address: Moers Kultur GmbH, Ostring 9, 47441 Moers, Germany
christina.von.richthofen@moers-festival.de | phone: 0049 2232 566 808
nicola.oberlinger@mœrs-festival.de | phone: 0049 2232 566 808

www.moers-festival.de