Passio – Compassio

Many religions and myths are based on messages of salvation preceded by harsh tests and sacrifices. There has been no more striking embodiment of the suffering and compassion of man than the figure of Christ and no artist has ever represented this mystery in musical terms as movingly or as passionately as Johann Sebastian Bach in his passions. No work of Western music has combined the joy at his coming or the ›compassio‹, the fellow feeling more immediately than Bach in his composition of the Christmas Oratorio.

Bach, jazz and classical Arabian music - can any musical worlds lie further apart than these? Vladimir Ivanoff and his ensemble have specialized in investigating histories from unconventional perspectives and establishing connections which can only be seen on a second viewing.

With his Arab, Turkish and German musicians, dancing dervishes, jazz saxophonists and the Modern String Quartet, Ivanoff transforms the baroque spirit of Bach’s music into new forms of expression and reflection through the living traditions of Arab music and jazz. The austere construction of Bach’s music for many voices, with its complex network of content and tone, is broken open and arranged for comparatively few oriental instruments to preserve its brilliant structure.  The melodies, now interweaved with Arabic melismas, coalesce in a wonderful way, inviting us to undertake a meditative journey through space and time, through religions and cultures.

Commissioned by the Ruhrtriennale.