West Side & beyond
Jazz professor Manfred Bründl arranges the closing concert of the Weimar Kunstfest
Under the motto "Bernstein, Brubeck and Bründl", Weimar jazz double bass professor Manfred Bründl is responsible for the content and music of the final concert of this year's Weimar Kunstfest. With the concert "West Side & beyond" on Sunday, 10 September at 8 p.m. in the Großes Haus of the Nationaltheater Weimar, the busy musician and teacher is organising a major event as part of the Kunstfest for the fourth time.
The "Manfred Bründl Quartet", the opera choir of the German National Theatre and the Staatskapelle Weimar will be taking part. The programme includes - as a world premiere - Bründl's self-composed Suite VII for jazz quartet and orchestra. In addition, Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" and Dave Brubeck's Jazz Mass "To Hope! A Celebration" for orchestra, mixed choir, vocal soloists and jazz quartet.
Especially for the final concert of the Kunstfest, several of Manfred Bründl's award-winning compositions for jazz quartet have been expanded by arranger Florian Ross to include a classical orchestra. The second part of the evening will feature a rarely played masterpiece by jazz great Dave Brubeck: in his jazz mass "To Hope! A celebration", he takes up the tradition of the classical masses and transforms them in his own way and with his own touch. With jazzy grooves, choir, orchestra, soloists and jazz quartet, Brubeck celebrates life and hope in his work.
Tickets are available at the theatre box office and at the evening box office.
More information: https://www.kunstfest-weimar.de/festival/programm/details/west-side-beyond-bernstein-brubeck-bruendl
Prof. Manfred Bründl is responsible for another project this autumn. Under the title "Sadaqa meets ACHAVA Project Orchestra", there will be a music workshop from 11 to 14 October followed by a concert as part of the ACHAVA Festival. Cooperation partners are the music school "Johann Nepomuk Hummel" Weimar, the Jazzmeile Thüringen and the city of Weimar.
The ensemble "Sadaqa", Arabic for "friendship", was founded in 2021 under the direction of Manfred Bründl. Together with the Syrian-Armenian singer Ibrahim Keivo, the Syrian oud virtuoso Mohannad Nasser and the percussionist Bodek Janke, the quartet spans an arc from the extremely diverse traditional musical culture of Syria with its Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian and Arab roots to jazz. In this way, it musically connects cultures and genres and creates musical encounters between the different cultural and linguistic areas.
This year, the ACHAVA Project Orchestra will be formed from the youth symphony orchestra of the music school "Johann Nepomuk Hummel" and the "Stadtstreichern" under Karima Albrecht. Here, young musicians from different social and cultural backgrounds come together who have a passion for making music together.
In a three-day holiday workshop from 11 to 13 October, the young musicians will have the unique opportunity to learn musically and culturally from the international guest musicians, to creatively explore new paths and to receive stimulating musical impulses. The sonorous result of this workshop will culminate in a public concert on Saturday, 14 October at 7 pm in the youth and cultural centre mon ami.
Tickets can be ordered online here.