2010/11 season

stART

Since last season, Bayer Arts & Culture has been sponsoring a small group of highly talented young artists and ensembles under its innovative stART project. In 2010/11 the stART community will for the first time include representatives from all four sections: classical and jazz musicians, a dancer and choreographer, actors and graphic artists.

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Benjamin Schaefer Trio

Compared with other sponsorship programmes, the stART project supports artists for a longer period – three years as a rule – enabling us to achieve lasting results. The idea is to build up a relationship of trust that will inspire young artists to look on Leverkusen as their cultural home. We want to maintain a dialogue that is beneficial to both parties and opens up potentially interesting prospects.
Our stART project has already proved to be a success! In Dresden, the young pianist Hardy Rittner was awarded the ECHO Classic Award in 2009 as “Rising Artist of the Year”. His CD recording of the piano works of Arnold Schönberg, which was sponsored by Bayer Arts & Culture, has won numerous awards and received outstanding reviews. With our support, the Signum Quartet has now also recorded its first CD, which is soon to be released. The “Signums” also took third place at the London International String Quartet Competition in 2009. Our first joint project with students of puppetry at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin was an eye-opener: the premiere of Dear Tilla Durieux showed just how multi-faceted this somewhat neglected genre is. In the MUSIC sector, we welcome the Benjamin Schaefer Trio (see photo on left) to the stART community in the new season. These three young jazz musicians (Benjamin Schaefer on piano, Robert Landfermann on bass and Markus Rieck on percussion) have attracted a great deal of media attention with their CD Roots and Wings and are now preparing to release a second CD with the support of Bayer Arts & Culture. The ensemble can be heard in our two jazz series, at midnight and Jazz in the Kulisse. Our joint projects with Hardy Rittner and the Signum Quartet form part of our subscriptions and are described in detail in the relevant sections of this prospectus. We can look forward to yet another premiere in the THEATRE section. This time, students from the acting class of Veit Schubert at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin are working on a project related to our theme of Myths in our time. The complex plot of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida will serve as a starting point for an examination of the destructive effects of war on the lives of young people today. The personal plight of Troilus against the background of the Trojan War is the most tragic imaginable for a young person, and there are obvious parallels with the situation in many countries today.
Another new member of the stART community, representing the DANCE section, is Shang-Chi Sun, a graduate of the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, who will present his first full-length choreography Nuwa in the Bayer Kulturhaus. His dance libretto is based on the creation of the first man as described in Chinese mythology dating back to around 3000 B.C. In the ART section, our Invitation to art colleges this season is extended to students from Cornelius Völker’s painting class at the Münster Academy of Fine Arts. An exhibition of their work will be on display from May 15 to July 3, 2011.

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