Summer-Festival: Lucerne Festival Academy 5

Like a researcher, composer-in-residence Mark Andre explores the possibilities of an instrument. Over several years he worked closely with the bassist Frank Reinecke. The result is a nearly three-quarter-hour solo piece that coaxes from the double bass an entire world of new and unusual sounds, directing our attention to the ephemeral, the unstable, the fragile. It pushes right up to the edge of the audible - for instance when the lowest string of the double bass is tuned even lower, down to an ultra-low E - and seeks, precisely through this, to let something transcendent, something metaphysical, shimmer through. For . . . selig sind . . ., a work conceived as spatial music and inspired by Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Andre drew on sonic experiences he gathered during extensive sessions with Jörg Widmann. “We developed sounds together on the clarinet that I myself didn’t know before - because they didn’t exist before,” Widmann recalls. “We marveled like children.”

Performers:
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Participants in the Contemporary-Conducting Program, conductors
Doreen Ketchens, clarinet

Program:
Augusta Read Thomas (*1964)
Excerpts from Abracadabra (Suncatchers) for 11 virtuosi

Elliot Carter (1908–2012)
Asko Concerto for ensemble

Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson (*1951)
Endangered Dreams for trumpet and chamber orchestra

Steve Reich (*1936)
Mallet Quartet for two marimbas and two vibraphones

“Reflecting the Streets of New Orleans”
A performance by Doreen Ketchens, Simone Keller and Jessie Cox in collaboration with musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), curated by Hiromi Gut (guerillaclassics)

This concert has no intermission

Tickets from 24.03.2026 | 10 am (CET)