Lüzisztraté

It has been a long time since we thought of Cécile McLorin Salvant as merely the promising winner of the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Her expressive voice capable of conveying profound emotions and refined sentiments, her virtuoso improvisation, and her brave, experimental combinations of styles have now come to represent a point of reference to a new generation.

This multi-art production draws on the song, dance and literary traditions of Mezőség (Câmpia Transilvaniei), a region in Transylvania with a very exciting and colourful culture. Musically, the show is centred around movements from Mikrokosmos, Béla Bartók’s piano cycle, as well as the melodies from Mezőség that inspired him.

“The sky does not begin with the stars, but at the tips of blades of grass.” On this special evening dedicated to his own compositions, Károly Binder revisits the most important stations of his creative career together with outstanding musicians with whom – as the quote from Mór Jókai suggests – he started out from the tips of blades of grass.