Projects
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Mutants in Music: I. Minimal Dominion
In uBu's three-part concert series "Mutants in Music", artists and audiences are confronted with the question of how music exerts power over the human body.
Transformation, manipulation, cooperation. For this purpose, two newly created works meet in the first edition of "Mutants in Music: I. Minimal Dominion".
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La Palanca
With “La Palanca” composer Vladimir Guicheff Bogacz wrote a piece for uBu's cast of musicians and dancers, referring to “Présence” and on the occasion of the Zimmermann Year 2018.
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uBu LAB
What happens when you give three musicians, three dancers and a costume designer the opportunity to simply do what they always wanted to do? Funded by the Reload scholarship of the Federal Cultural Foundation and the FEB programme of the Music Fund, the seven uBu members explored the thematic complexes of music and power and music and haptics in two research phases.
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Vom Hören und Feen - pas de concert
Glassy sounds in the mist. The fairy tries not to make a sound, strokes and feels, floats and yet sinks into the black of the lake. A world rises whose boundaries blur before the listening eye.
Rendezvous with uBu in the score of B.A. Zimmermann's cello concerto “en forme de pas de trois”: the musical text, a fictitious place somewhere between ballet music and instrumental concerto, is full of allusions and explosions of associations alongside the playing instructions.
uBu's interpretation experts nestle in the soundscapes and imagery. They skillfully pave paths that open up between playing and moving. They meet the mythical creatures that live here between sound and image and look deep into their eyes.
The ensemble doesn't just turn the score page by page, no, it folds it into a paper bird and lets it float in the deep black, shiny nothingness. Zimmermann's pluralism rises out of the fog, wonderfully alienated and quite ludicrously staged. The score pages shine in the moonlight and look like swans. Or like paladins?
Ultimately, not a concert. Because it is neither about hearing nor seeing, but about the unexpectedly fantastic that awakens when moving from one to the other.
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What does a concert hall dream of?
Winter 20/21, in Lockdown: uBu performatively explores the almost lifeless, sleeping building of the Kölner Philharmonie with short 360-degree videos between music and dance. No humming of voices from an expectant audience, no thunderous applause. What does a concert hall dream of?
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Présence
In B.A. Zimmermann's absurd ballet blanc Présence for piano trio and dance, the composer has Don Quijotte, Molly Bloom and Roi uBu - the ensemble's namesake - meet, three figures from world literature, each of whom is assigned to the instruments of the trio. With verses from poems by Paul Pörtner and with musical quotations rich in references, presented by a silent "speaker", Présence unfolds an enigmatic web of references, that either lead into the void or can be linked and spun further in the imagination of the listeners.
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Mutants in Music: II. Becoming uBu
Ensemble uBu legt sich in “Mutants in Music: II.Becoming uBu” selbst auf den Grill, um herauszufinden: Braucht es überhaupt eine musikalische, tänzerische oder sonstige Identität, oder kommt man auch ohne klar?
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Calling Sirens
To conjure music into existence, the musicians surrender to the musical structures, their bodies, their brains, their movements. From here, the power of music also spreads to the bodies of those who expose themselves to the sound, penetrating and forcing its way through ears, eyes, skin.
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Vollendet | Unvollendet
A concert evening with a scenic touch featuring the three musicians of uBu and singer Marie Heeschen: Unfinished songs by Schubert meet György Kurtág's "Kafka Fragmente". The fragmentary nature of the songs is contrasted with Schubert's escalating Piano Trio op. 100 in the second half of the concert.
