Abbas Kiarostami: The Chorus – short movie (1982)

Golnaz Shariatzadeh: Blue Womb for ensemble, electronics and animation (WP)

Galina Ustvolskaya: Piano Sonata 6 (1988) 

Alexander Khubeev: Don’t leave the room for solo performer, ensemble, electronics and live video (WP)

Co-production: Gaudeamus Festival Utrecht, DE SINGEL, Musica Strasbourg, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Ghent, Nadar Ensemble, Ultima Oslo

Commissioned by Nadar Ensemble with support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

Joseph Brodsky’s iconic 1969 poem Don’t leave the room has lost none of its relevance today and is the starting point for an interdisciplinary performance by Nadar Ensemble. Alexander Khubeev sets this poem about censorship, a pandemic and activism, to music in a very special way and ‘narrates’ the text using sign language. However, this ‘silence’ has a deafening effect in his dystopian sound world. Moved by the Iranian revolution that recently had another triumphant climax, Golnaz Shariatzadeh engages in her highly personal way. Remarkably, Shariatzadeh not only composes but also makes animated films, combining both in her creation Blue Womb. This haunting work about the loss of hope, is set in a post-apocalyptic city. In Abbas Kiarostami’s The Chorus, an old man, fed up with the noise pollution in his city, struggles with his hearing aid. His choice of silence, however, symbolises his inability to listen to the younger generation. Galina Ustvolskaya had agoraphobia, but this did not prevent her from writing the most radical music in silence. However, her characteristic repetitive clusters of sound in her piano work could not pass the censorship committee. From a rock-solid conviction, alone in her flat, she wrote revolutionary music that, however, could not be heard.

With Don’t leave the room, Nadar wants to give a voice to an Iranian and Russian composer with an uncertain future, who artistically take a stand against their current regimes.

Marieke Berendsen, violin – Elena Evstratova, solo performer – Nico Couck, E-guitar – Katrien Gaelens, flute – Yves Goemaere, percussion – Wannes Gonnissen, sound – Robin Goossens, business director – Pieter Matthynssens, cello, artistic director – Elisa Medinilla, piano – Thomas Moore, trombone – Stefan Prins, artistic director – Steven Reymer, video and light – Dries Tack, clarinet – Veerle Vervoort, production leader

Don’t leave the room. This is better left undone.
You’ve got cheap smokes, so why should you need the sun?
Nothing makes sense outside, happiness least of all.
You may go to the loo but avoid the hall. 

Don’t leave the room. Don’t think of calling a taxi.
Space consists of the hall and ends at the door; its axis
bends when the meter’s on. If your tootsie comes in – before
she starts blabbing undressing – throw her out of the door.

Don’t leave the room. Pretend a cold in the head.
What could be more exciting than wallpaper, chair and bed?
Why leave a room to which you will come back later,
unchanged at best, more probably mutilated?

Don’t leave the room. There might be a jazzy number
on the radio. Nude but for shoes and coat, dance a samba.
Cabbage smell in the hall fills every nook and cranny.
You wrote so many words; one more would be one too many. 

Don’t ever leave the room. Let nobody but the room
know what you look like. Incognito ergo sum,
as substance informed its form when it felt despair.
Don’t leave the room! You know, it’s not France out there.

Don’t be an imbecile! Be what the others couldn’t be.
Don’t leave the room! Let furniture keep you company,
vanish, merge with the wall, barricade your iris
from the chronos, the eros, the cosmos, the virus.

Joseph Brodsky, 1970