Exhibitions
Sing Sing Theater
Oct 20
An unconventional performance that combines electronic music, visual design, poetry reading and a live performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No 8. In C Minor, Op 110
Tickets: 800 Baht (including one drink)
For bookings and inquiries, please email: nat.wtfbangkok@gmail.com, 02 662 6246
Pro Musica Quartet:
Leo Phillips, Violin
Jirajet Jesadachet, Violin Tasana Nagavajara, Viola Noa Chorin, Violoncello
Poetry Reading Performers:
Wesley Hsu
Ying Kiratibhongse
Sasapin Siriwanij
Maria Lynn Ehren (Maria Poonlertlarp)
Electronic sound artist: Nutchapon Choosakul
Visual Artist: Natnaran Buayloy
Footage Researcher: Amanda Mustard
Curator: Somrak Sila
Pro Musica & WTF gallery in partnership with Sing Sing Theatre present COUNTERPOINT. For the first time ever in Bangkok, the audience will experience “avant-garde" classical music performance in one of the most stunning and well-known clubs in Bangkok, in the least traditional way. There will be no seating, no strict rules for the audience to applaud and not applaud. Everyone is free to roam around the club, buy drinks and find their own corners to enjoy the performance.
The event kicks off with four poetry readings accompanied by live electronic music. The performances by both poetry readers and electronic musicians are the artists’ personal responses, composed and recited specifically to the classical work that is to follow, shostakovich's Quartet's No.8.
In the second part, Pro Musica Quartet will perform Shostakovich’s String Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 -- five dramatic movements without pause that will be combined with contemporary animated visuals created by a new-media artist and a journalist.
In the summer of 1960 Shostakovich's work on the score of a Soviet-East German film took him to Dresden, the German city that had been destroyed in 1945 by an Allied firebombing which killed more people than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. There, in a span of only three days, Shostakovich composed string Quartet No. 8 inscribed “In memory of victims of fascism and war” which became his best known work for its intensity, immediacy, pain, shock and stunning silences. Although Shostakovich maintained that he could never hear Quartet No. 8 without breaking into tears, the work is not self-pitying. Rather its genius is that it transcends individual pain to address all human despair. It is this which explains its profundity. The torment that it voices is the tragic, human agony of all those who have experienced grievous loss whether it be due to fascism, war, or personal bereavement. Shostakovich's Quartet No.8 String Quartet resonates with this bitter universal experience; it is truly 'music written with the heart's blood'; that is why it is a masterpiece of the twentieth century.
Supported by SCG Foundation, Singha Corporation and Faculty of music Silpakorn University
