Next week we will begin the rehearsals for music theater performance L'ALQUIMISTA in Barcelona, at the Teatro Nacional de Catalunya. Michael De Cock created and directs a theatre adaptation of the book The Abyss by Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Lutenist Jurgen De bruyn joins the stage and, together with composer Alain Franco, provides the soundtrack for the story, which is set in 16th-century Europe with a focus on the last years of the Bruges doctor and alchemist Zeno and on universal themes of humanity and freedom in turbulent times.
The premiere will take place on the 11th of May 2023. The tickets are on sale vie TNC.
De Theaterkrant describes The Mass Man as "intriguing musical meditation on mass, power and manipulation".
The full review is available on the website.
We had the pleasure of showing THE MASS MAN to a sold out audience in Concertgebouw Brugge. Prior to the performance, Muziektheater Transparant director Wouter Van Looy and artistic director of Zefiro Torna Jurgen De bruyn shared their thoughts with the audience. They explained how Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti and his masterly book on the themes of mass and power, medieval crusader songs and film images by Wim Catrysse form the raw material for a gripping music theatre performance.
Theatre critic Johan Thielemans wrote an engaging review.
The CD TIME CRAWLS is out on the label HOMERECORDS.BE and also available on our webshop (> CD).
Zefiro Torna takes us into a timeless universe with a reinterpretation of the 17th century broken consort music. Melodies intuitively created by flute player Jowan Merckx received a new arrangement for flute, violin, viola da gamba, violone, harp and lute by composers Marnix De Cat and Martin Valcke. The new written music bears traces of baroque and traditional music from all over Europe. The music, which is sometime melancholic, sometimes nimble and festive, fascinates by its ingeniously crafted texture and invites to dance.
This autumn, the alchemistic laboratory BALSAM with Laika, Theatre of the Senses will be on tour again. After two series of performances at the Boulevard Festival in Den Bosch and Cultura Nova in Heerlen in August, the team is ready for it! Prepare yourself for a bewitching ritual in which music, scents and flavours immerse you in the shimmering world of alchemy. Besides the Greenwich+Docks International Festival in London and a tour to Portugal and France, BALSAM also passes by a number of Belgian venues.
--> Take a look in the agenda for all dates
Zefiro Torna
Our time can be considered as a converging and ending point of numerous time cycles. The Mayan calendar as well as the biblical and the alchemist’s one point 2012 out as the year of the Apocalypse and the time of prophecies.
‘O, Monde aveugle’ depicts man in his blind fear of the unknown, confronted with a profound sense of moral turmoil. The beast in man is revealed and his destructive nature surfaces, he is lead by the uncanny comical and obscene. The confrontation with his self sets off a shift of consciousness, a transformation leading to a new age, with an exit towards new energies.
Together with their fellows from the internationally acclaimed crossover project ‘Les Tisserands’, Zefiro Torna creates a band pondering this theme in a way reminiscent of the satires in Jeroen Bosch’s Renaissance paintings. A variety of old, modern, and hybrid instruments provide the accompaniment for songs that are sometimes striking and on other moments conveying purifying thoughts. The music is mainly based on older sources from the Trecento and Renaissance, but also contains compositions for the new age.
The program is made up of ballads, madrigals, lamentation, ‘blasons’ and instrumental music by Jacopo da Bologna, Johannes Ciconia, Cristobal de Morales, Clemens non Papa, Cipriano de Rore, Georges Brassens and Jowan Merckx. Els Van Laethem set texts by anonymous Roman poets, Petrarch and Michelangelo to her melodious song lines.
Els Van Laethem soprano, trombone, marine trumpet, compositions
Jowan Merckx flutes, crumhorn, bagpipe, percussion, compositions
Philippe Laloy soprano saxophone, alto crumhorn, bass flute
Gwen Cresens bandoneon
Vincent Noiret double bass
Jurgen De bruyn lutes, artistic direction
Concentus Moraviae Festival, Mikulov, Chateau, Tsjechië (CZ)
Festival van Vlaanderen Mechelen, Westmalle, Sint-Martinuskerk