Event
KLANGSPUREN SCHWAZ, LAMENT: A RITUAL OF LETTING GO

Hand on heart, open your mouths: How many songs can we think of that we can sing off the top of our heads together with others? The odd Christmas carol perhaps, Happy Birthday, and then it starts to wear thin. Yet for many centuries, songs have helped us to process and channel emotions at threshold points in life, from weddings to funerals, and perhaps to really feel them for the first time. Juliet Fraser laments this cultural loss of ritualistic singing, and includes herself in this. The British soprano has made singing her profession and experienced a crisis of meaning during the pandemic: her relationship with singing had become serious, perfectionist and somehow alienated from her own emotions, from the communal. She had actually planned to end her career at the end of the 2024/25 season with a dramatic swan song. However, this year's festival marks the beginning of the new season and Fraser is still here. During the crisis, she has found a new direction back to song. Her new program Lament: A Ritual of Letting go brings together songs from different times and cultures: Corsican polyphony and Byzantine hymns by Kassia, the first known female composer in the West, yearning songs by Josquin and Couperin, but also contemporary laments by Soosan Lolavar and James Weeks. Free of nostalgia, Juliet Fraser wants to celebrate the expressive diversity of the voice in a more intimate, playful and courageous way, more collaboratively and with the desire to close the gap between the music and herself, but also the audience, a little bit.

Shuttle from Schwaz train station to St. Martin's Church. Return journey to Schwaz station after the event. Registration required at tickets@klangspuren.at.