Ictus, Collegium Vocale Gent & Suzanne Vega

A musical landmark of the 20th century, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, choreographed by Robert Wilson, was the highlight of the 1976 Avignon Festival. An almost 3-hour-long opera in four acts, for ensemble, choir and soloists, Einstein on the Beach develops music that is repetitive and minimalist, evolving and lyrical, mathematical and ethereal, and where patterns of movement and sound are translated into speed or hypnotic loops. In this world of electronic ether, the research around robotic or sensitive voice, around “vocal” poetry, is constant as the work retraces the life and work of Albert Einstein, not so much in a biographical portrait of the physicist, as through the visionary character of his scientific thought and the philosophical transformations it produced. An interpretation performed by the Ictus ensemble, in collaboration with Suzanne Vega, the Collegium Vocale Gent under the direction of Georges-Elie Octors, and the visual artist Germaine Kruip.