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maltatoday SUNDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2017 31 This Week Music in Motion, which is being organised by the Manoel Theatre and the Malta Association for Contemporary Music as part of the cultural programme for Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture, will take place this Friday 10 and this November 11 at the Valletta Campus Theatre in Valletta (ex-MITP). The event is free of charge, but booking is required via the Manoel Theatre website: www.teatrumanoel.com Music on an interdisciplinary platform As the last Modern Music Days' event for 2017, Music in Motion, edges closer, IGGY FENECH chats to artistic director Ruben Zahra to find out more about it and to uncover what's in store for 2018 THIS past year has been a busy one for composer Ruben Zahra. In fact, on top of his work with KIRANA (a children's opera project which, this year, has been touring in Den- mark, France, Australia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus), Zahra has been the man behind all of Modern Music Days' (MMD) events, which included the highly-successful Bandli installation as part of the Malta International Arts Festival, and Rhythms of Vision featuring video-art and contemporary music at the Manoel Theatre. "Following on the ethos and vi- sion of MMD, all of our events aim to connect 20th century repertoire and contemporary music to other art forms, including installations, video art, photography, perfor- mance and dance," explains Zahra – one of Malta's most successful and renowned composers. True to his word, MMD's last serving for this year, Music in Motion, portrays a programme of modern string quartets set to contemporary dance. The perfor- mance, which will take place on November 10 and 11 at Valletta Campus Theatre (ex-MITP), is not just a stand-alone event, but the prelude to Contra: Dance and Conflict, a conference held by the world's largest scholarly asso- ciation on dance – the US-based Dance Studies Association – that will be hosted by the University of Malta in July 2018. "It was last year that I approached Francesca Tranter and Malaika Sarco Thomas from the Depart- ment of Dance Studies at the UoM to collaborate on MMD," he con- tinues. "They identified the Dance Tour 2017 – a dance programme that the final-year dance students would present both in Malta, as well as in France – for this project. The music for the Dance Tour is on playback but, in Malta, the stu- dents will get the opportunity to present the choreographies to the live performance of a string quar- tet." Zahra selected several string quartets by 20th century and contemporary composers for the choreographers to choose from. The selection was finally narrowed down to four works: String Quar- tet No 3 (Mishima) by Philip Glass; String Quartet with Tape by Nor- ma Beecroft; String Quartet No 3 by Alfred Schnittke and a selection from John's Book of Alleged Danc- es by John Adams. The music will be performed by Zene Quartet fea- turing Vincenzo Piccone and Klara Nazaj on violins, Ayako Omoto on the viola and Akos Kertesz on the cello. The choreographers for Mu- sic in Motion are Maltese dance artist Francesca Tranter, French choreographer Niels Plotard, Dan- ish actress and director Marie Keiser-Nielsen, and Vancouver- based Swedish dance artist Em- malena Fredriksson. "The same repertoire of string quartets will also be presented next year as a chamber music concert within the framework of MMD," Zahra says. In fact, MMD will present six 'regional' concerts in 2018, one for each region: the North, the South, the South-east, and the Centre of the island, as well as Gozo and Valletta. Each concert will take place in a herit- age site within the selected region, and Zahra has identified a series of unique sites for these concert that will introduce audiences to new music in unknown historical settings. The series includes site- specific electronic music inside catacombs; a piano recital in an art gallery, a string quartet concert in a crypt, and sunrise performance in a Neolithic temple, to mention but a few! All MMD events are organised by the Manoel Theatre and the Malta Association for Contempo- rary Music as part of the cultural programme of Valletta 2018, Eu- ropean Capital of Culture. Be- sides the 'regional concert series', MMD are also working on other major events in 2018. Probably the most demanding concert will be TEHILLIM – Masterworks of the 20th Century at the Manoel Theatre on 9 June 2018, as the programme will bring together selected musicians from the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and from the Brno Contemporary Orchestra (Czech Republic) under the direc- tion of conductor Pavel Šnajdr. As the title for this event implies, the concert will present major works from the 20th century, all of which have never been performed in Malta: 'Octandre' by Edgard Varèse; Chamber Concerto, for 13 instruments by György Ligeti; Sinfonietta, for chamber orches- tra Op.1 by Benjamin Britten and Tehillim by Steve Reich! Another highlight of MMD is PARADE & the Velvet Gentle- man, which will take place at Te- atru Manoel on 27 July 2018. This project celebrates the 100th anni- versary of the ballet Parade, which premiered in 1917 with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. This 20th century masterpiece features the music of Erik Satie scored to a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso. This new ver- sion of Parade for MMD, mean- while, will revisit the ballet on an interdisciplinary platform, em- bellishing the choreography with stop-motion animation, puppetry and projection dancing. The per- formance includes other works by Satie, known by his contemporar- ies as 'the velvet gentleman'. The programme includes some of his masterpieces for the piano such as Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes as well as works prefiguring the minimalism of Steve Reich and the incidental music of John Cage. Undoubtedly another busy year for the composer, 2018 promises to be an incredibly exciting one for music lovers as Valletta finally takes its role as European Capital of Culture. In the meantime, how- ever, we can all enjoy the interdis- ciplinary Music in Motion! Music in Motion presents a programme of modern string quartets set to contemporary dance Ruben Zahra PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAFAEL MIELCZAREK