Bergson's Rise

from Franz Schoch

The weight of the doors as you enter makes you feel the cathedral-like power of this building, and the first time you look up at the ceiling, you feel like you've grown a few centimeters. That's how I feel every time. Bergson's Rise is on the program, one of the very first productions. Based on an idea by Program Director Maximilian Maier and Artistic Director Roman Sladek, who is also the bandleader of the Jazzrausch Big Band, the Bergson House Orchestra wants to fill the atrium with music and life in a way never experienced before: musicians moving through the space. Listeners who are allowed, indeed encouraged, to do the same. I wonder what that will be?

First of all, the thoughts circle: like a warning sign, the glass elevator hangs glaringly at two-thirds height in the corner of the old power station building. An elevator of all things, the most ridiculed sound space of all, whose much-maligned music serves to calm sardine-like frozen human statues that change floors but rarely change facial expressions.
But this one calls out into the deep blue, darkened atrium: Here. Have. You. Room. And how it sounds. Move at last! Swim into the blue.
Bergson's Rise is an intoxication that you only feel slowly. The music by Bergson house composer Leonhard Kuhn begins gently and tentatively and surprisingly like the touch of the back of a hand. Kuhn, who sneaked into Bergson when it was still a lost place to use it as an echo chamber for a kick drum, gives his listeners time as he carefully tells the Bergson story

Then the first ones move, some prancing, some searching, many marveling. Diagonals of gazes like flashlight cones. The spatiality of the sound arouses curiosity. And yes, softer soles are recommended, because the quieter passages are even more fun to listen to.

Sometimes the rhythm takes on a heartbeat monotony, then the atrium seems to expand with every breath, even to breathe as a space itself. Pulsating. Relaxing. Then flickering in the light. Blinking. Sighing. Roaring. Cheering.
Because wind instruments refine the emotion of the human voice into a clear sound, this music is a language that everyone understands. And how these notes, sometimes breathed, sometimes pressed with verve, sound like a call. As if shouted to each other in this room.
At some point it ends, quite suddenly. Enthusiastic, but almost reverent. A Bergson concert seems to have no finale, no curtain and final applause, rather a transition to the next new beginning.

The Bergson awakens. And we rub our eyes.

Our first in-house production: Bergson's Rise with the Jazzrausch Bigband

You've never experienced this before: the immersive party concert Bergson's Rise! Immersive? Party concert? Yes! The musicians of the Jazzrausch Bigband, our orchestra in residence, stand in front of you, behind you, next to you and explore the spectacular former Kesselhalle together with you. So you are right in the middle of the action while the rich sound from all levels sweeps around your ears. Atmospheric sounds meet pulsating techno beats. The show is not just listened to in silence - immerse yourself in a mix of party atmosphere and perfectly crafted concert music.