„Green lung“, WWF campaign-‐motive, Source: h ttps://sebastianbackhaus.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/wwf_lungen.jpg C ar oline Hausen
Reco rder P la yer
Kais er st ra ße 38
90403 N ürnber g
Ger many
Phone: +49 911 49045451
+49 173 2539248
Mail: carolinehausen@
gmail.com
BREATH – a concertante installation
Caroline Hausen, recorders, video installation und concept
Idea
Our life starts with our first breath and ends with our last breath.
Breath accompanies us at every turn, reacts immediately to our feelings and influences us in
our inner self, for example while meditation.
Especially for players of a wind instrument it constitutes the centre, as only breath gives the
instrument its sound. We train it, get put in the place by our breath, work on and with it.
It is the lowest common denominator which we all share – musicians as well as the audience.
“BREATH – a concertante installation” is a solo version of „BREATH – scenes from the live of a
musician“, which was previously performed with students as part of the festival „Aktuelle
Musik“ at the academy of music in Nuremberg in April 2015 in cooperation with the director
Jan-Tage Kühlung (Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft Gießen). It is based on the
correspondent piece by Mauricio Kagel and aims at challenging and extending the
traditional relationship between audience and artist.
The composition by Mauricio Kagel is adapted for this in a perfect way, because it turns
performative actions, which serve normally as preparation of the concert, as well as musical
exercises to an elementary part of the work. Because of this dramatization the audience gets
a completely new access to aspects of a musical performance, which took in the past only a
minor part in the perception of the audience.
Setting and works
The program aims at exploring breath in its different forms of appearance. Thereby the
minimalistic one-act play „Breath“ by Samuel Beckett appears with help of a video
projection in different versions frequently on different places during the program and
represents in this way the performative frame of the performance.
At the same time, the selected works deal in an intense an directly physical way with the
breath of the musician: While breath appears as a baseline in Mauricio Kagels piece, it
increases into a desperate struggle in „Dialogues Sauvages“ by Ansgar Beste, disappears
almost completely in „Weeds in Ophelia’s hair“ by Rolf Riehm, just to get to a new energetic
climax with Dai Fujikuras „Perla“.
Program
Samuel Beckett
(1906-1989)
„Breath“ - version 1 (video)
Mauricio Kagel
(1931-2008)
„Atem“ („Breath“) (1969/70)
Ansgar Beste
(*1981)
„Dialogues Sauvages“ (2014)
Samuel Beckett
Rolf Riehm
(*1937)
„Breath“ - version 2 (video)
„Weeds in Ophelia’s hair“ (1991)
Dai Fujikura
(*1977)
„Perla“ (2003/ 2008)
Samuel Beckett
„Breath“ – version 3 (video)
Total duration: Approx. 55 minutes
Scene from Becketts „Breath“, Source: h ttp://www.proximofuturo.gulbenkian.pt/en/performances/breath Caroline Hausen studied recorder from 2007 until 2011 with Jeremias Schwarzer
at the academy of music in Nuremberg. Besides her studies she took master
classes with Karel van Steenhoven, Lucia Mense, Dorothee Oberlinger and
Maurice Steger.
From 2011 until 2013 she passed the master degree course for Contemporary
Music at the academy of music in Nuremberg.
In the context of her master theses, she began to be concerned with the
interaction of contemporary music and other art forms (visual arts, video, dance); this resulted
– cooperating with the choreographer Barbara Bess an the visual artist Elli Velliou – in the
concertante installation “Ophelia’s ruin”, which was performed first in July 2013 in the
exhibition hall of the academy of fine arts in Nuremberg; the commissioned composition
“Dialogues Sauvages” by Ansgar Beste originated as part of this project.
She gave concerts in Israel and Switzeland.
- 2012 Germany Scholarship
- 2013 scholar of Live Music Now, together with her duo partner Stefan Haas (Lute)
- 2013 scholar in the program „Förderung der Chancengleichheit von Frauen in Forschung
und Lehre“ of the Bavarian ministry of education and cultural affairs
- Since 2014 lectureship for subject didactics recorder at the academy of music in Nuremberg