Malte Giesen: FRAME
music theatre (2018–20)/75′

1. Beginnings
–Performance

–Music
–Conversation

2. Work
–Rehearsal
–Dive
–Framing of framing of framing frames

3. Making Of
–Aftershow

concept, composition, electronics: Malte Giesen
direction: Thomas Fiedler
costumes: Astrid Eisenberger

Neue Vocalsolisten
Johanna Vargas, soprano/Truike van der Poel, mezzo-soprano/Martin Nagy, tenor/Guillermo Anzorena, baritone/Andreas Fischer, bass

Ensemble Ascolta
Markus Schwind, trumpet/Andrew Digby, trombone/Hubert Steiner, guitar/Florian Hoelscher, piano/Boris Müller, drums/Erik Borgir, violoncello

Composition commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte

World premiere on 6 February 2020 at ECLAT Festival Neue Musik at Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

The transmedia music theatre piece FRAME comments on the shifts and manipulations of perception in a complex, global, digitalised, and media-driven world. In our media environment, content is constantly sublimated, refined, processed, contextualised, and interpreted.

Public events are controlled through media staging, and political content is often obscured through aestheticisation. Artistic work shifts from the realm of invention to that of discovery.

Malte Giesen finds the material for his music theatre in these media phenomena. He creates a complex interplay of commented, contextualised, prepared, and documentary stage and spatial music, hidden and absurd theatre, pre-produced and live video, and formats from popular and internet culture. Thus, FRAME becomes a precise, astonishing, incisive, and entertaining commentary on the theme of framing.