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Sacrum Profanum 2023

The musical avant-garde comes to the Sacrum Profanum Festival!

2016-09-01
Great minds think alike. Outstanding musicians will always find each other and come together to create wonderful things, which set new directions in art. The paths of Mike Patton and John Zorn which had crossed repeatedly in the past, will cross yet again at this year's Sacrum Profanum. The two stars of the musical avant-garde will light up the October sky over Krakow. Mike Patton will perform in person, and John Zorn will be represented by his music. And all this during the three great concerts at the Sacrum Profanum 2016!

For each of them genres are not limits within which one should keep; they are ingredients that one should experiment with by mixing them in various proportions to create new flavours. And the more intriguing, the better. From
Easy, a cover of The Commodores written by Lionel Richie and recorded by Patton with Faith No More, popular with commercial radio stations, to scratch-based vocals in the album of the legendary turntablists, The X-Ecutioners. From Zorn's Dadaist and dirty Naked City, featuring the creme de la creme of New York's jazz avant-garde, and with a drastic photo of Weegee on the cover, to the album The Circle Maker, full of beautiful contemporary compositions, rooted in the Chasidic tradition. From the atmosphere of the festival in San Remo, with which the pop song Ore d'amore from the albumMondo Cane exudes, to the ambient and noise electronic trips with Fennesz. This network can be stretched indefinitely, not only because of the boldness of the ideas, which Mike Patton and John Zorn turned into reality in the course of their artistic activity, but also because of their titanic effort.

Impressive is especially the number of Zorn's existing publications, signed with his name both as a performer, and author of the composition. And not to mention the manufacturer - he acted in this role in more than 2,000 albums. And in all the roles he has always lived up to the standard. The New Yorker's talent for writing music pours in, encompassing the inspirations with jazz and Jewish music, as well as contemporary classical, metal, avant-garde, noise, electronics... One can get short of breath listing the species, in which the musician has dabbed.

One of the more important of them is chamber music bordering on modern classical and klezmer music. Zorn can compose it like no other. Wistful or inspiring, fluent or intermitted, the work is always of the highest quality. This proves Zorn's deep attachment to the Jewish heritage and the skills to present it to the world in the best light, devoid of the banal commercial filter. And it is exactly chamber music for piano and string quartet that will sound on Wednesday, October 5 at the Theatre Hall of the Congress Centre ICE Krakow. We will see John Zorn's imagination the more clearly that his songs will be performed by outstanding instrumentalists. They are: the specialist in contemporary music, American pianist Stephen Drury, whose interpretations of the twentieth-century works marked the performance horizon (the works Fay ce que vouldras of 2005 and Carny of 1991), and the legendary British Arditti Quartet, for which contemporary music has no secrets and whom the critics often place higher than the great Kronos Quartet. Four chamber musicians will perform three of Zorn's compositions: from 1996 (Kol Nidre), 2003 (Necronomicon) and 2011(Pandora's Box). The last one will feature, apart from the British, a talented Polish soprano known for the unconventional use of her voice, Barbara Kinga Majewska. Thus, the concert on October 5 will allow us an excellent overview of chamber works by John Zorn, and whet the appetite for more in the future.

Mike Patton is also a very active artist, although not as prolific as Zorn. Nevertheless, we will let him compensate for his deficiencies in discography at this year's Sacrum Profanum - during the festival, he will perform twice! For the first time ever, we see him accompanied by violinist and composer Eyvind Kang, in material from the album Virginal Co Ordinates, refreshed and enriched for the festival(the original version was released in 2004). On the other hand, during the second concert he will perform (we wouldn't call it "singing" on purpose!) the vocal in Luciano Berio Laborintus II, and thus wonderfully close this year's week of remarkable music. The two very different works, distant aesthetics - though still within the mainstream of modern classical, and a different approach to musical material. Not everyone could handle such a challenge, especially when it's taken during two consecutive nights. Nevertheless, we are confident that Patton's interpretations will be flawless. Virginal Co Ordinates is largely vocal improvisation, the art of juggling with words and melody, full of meanders and nonchalance. A perfect material for a pugnacious dandy! On the other hand,Laborintus II is a manifesto of multiplicity. It is a work, with which Berio testifies to the modern world, complex, ambiguous, full of interconnections and inspiration. When you remember that the person combining the San Remo pop and Dadaist metal is Mike Patton, you will understand that it is impossible to find a better candidate to speak, shout, laugh, echo and belt out the content of Berio's score.

The presence of stadium-size-crowd-attracting Patton at the Sacrum Profanum may surprise - his rock roots still obscure his multi-threaded musical activity. Maintaining to keep the status of a star, he developed a crowd of fans of his experimental side. None of them prevails; what is more, both are undoubtedly worthy of attention. Experiment and popularity, sophistication and approachability. Six octaves, extraordinary musicality, a huge self-distance and relentless curiosity guarantee that the two festival concerts of Mike Patton will be much publicized in Poland.

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Sacrum Profanum
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All days pass: Sacrum Profanum 2020

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150 PLN

It does not include the performance of Purification and the Esoteric Chords and ~ maturity.

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Mike Patton

Stephen Drury