"Brücken Festival: Building Musical Bridges Across Genres and Generations at Kunsthaus Muerz"

2023-05-27 04:00:00

Artistic bridging has always been the specialty of the art house muerz. The house, which opened in the heart of Mürzzuschlag in 1991, plans and implements a high-quality cultural program in the fields of literature, fine arts, architecture and music. And within the latter genre, the Kunsthaus muerz has been building very concrete “bridges” for the past 15 years.

The diversity of making music

The “brücken” is the music festival that builds on the Mürztaler Musikwerkstatt founded by Hans Werner Henze, but takes social changes into account. The aim of “brücken” has always been to convey the exciting variety of music making in our time and thereby offer access to as many people as possible. Building bridges from jazz to pop, rap, performance, improvisation and the integration of all electro-acoustic aids to avant-garde are the most important guidelines of “brücken”.

The Kapfenberg violinist and conductor Ernst Kovacic has curated the bridge festival since it began in 2008. “The ‘brücken’ started out from the idea that you have to mediate between what people can accept and what is being written today in terms of new music, that is, bridges have to be built.” According to Kovacic, the “bridges” offer a kind of hearing aid in this sense. “It is true that something new is offered, but in an environment in which you can perceive this new thing better.”

Ernst Kovacic has been curating the “brücken” since 2008

Across the genres

The variety of music-making mentioned above is revealed in the first two events of the “brücken”: The festival will be opened on June 9 by the world-famous composer, conductor and singer Heinz Karl Gruber, who is also a co-founder of this festival. With this concert, in which Ernst Kovacic will take part as a soloist, HK Gruber and Ernst Kovacic will be congratulated on their milestone birthdays.

The following day there is the electronic contrast program: The trio around Dieter Kovacic (not related to Ernst), Burkhard Stangl and Billy Roisz enter into a musical communication with turntables, gramophone, guitar, electronics and bass. “People hear that far too little,” regrets Ernst Kovacic. “This music has a very high recognition value, the spark jumps over immediately!”

Chansonnier and conductor HK Gruber designed the opening evening of “brücken”

The next day, on June 10th, “eh” and Billy Roisz entered into musical communication

Old and new

Another example of bridging the gap between old and new is the performance of the Ensembles Singing Admont on June 11th in the Neuberger Münster. “Here, old Spanish music is played and combined with new vocal music,” says Kovacic.

Speaking of old and new, or old and young: “bridging” also bridges generations. Young musicians from the region make music together with internationally renowned artists and have the opportunity to play contemporary works and to work with the composers of these works. Children and young people are introduced to the content of contemporary music and are made familiar with the ways of thinking and approaches of contemporary artists. The project involves local music groups, musicians, schools and other organizations and stands for an open attitude towards tradition, progress and vision.

And ultimately, “brücken” is also about overcoming geographical borders: the festival covers the entire region and takes place in Mürzzuschlag, Neuberg an der Mürz and Kindberg.