Artwork Ensemble

27/10/2024

Live in concert, Sommertheater Detmold, Germany

15/12/2018

And please convince me that those tribe people are backwards?

"The ancestors are so important: we would not be alive without them. Everyone knows this in their heart, but some have forgotten. Would any of us be here without our ancestors? I don't think so.

I was trained as a healer. You have to read the plants and the sand. You have to dig the roots and become fit. You put some of the root back for tomorrow, so one day your grandchildren can find it and eat. You learn what the land tells you.

When the old die, we bury them and they become ancestors. When there is sickness, we dance and we talk to them; they speak through my blood. I touch the sick person and can find the illness and heal it.

We are the ancestors of our grandchildren's children. We look after them, just as our ancestors look after us. We aren't here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren.

Why am I here? Because my people love their land, and without it we are dying. Many years ago, the president of Botswana said we could live on our ancestral land forever. We never needed anyone to tell us that. Of course we can live where God created us! But the next president said we must move and began forcing us away.

They said we had to go because of diamonds. Then they said we were killing too many animals: but that's not true. They say many things which aren't true. They said we had to move so the government could develop us.

The president says unless we change we will perish like the dodo. I didn't know what a dodo was. But I found out: it was a bird which was wiped out by settlers.

The president was right. They are killing us by forcing us off our land. We have been tortured and shot at. They arrested me and beat me.

Thank you for the Right Livelihood Award. It is global recognition of our struggle and will raise our voice throughout the world. When I heard I had won I had just been let out of prison. They say I am a criminal, as I stand here today.

I say what kind of development is it when the people live shorter lives than before? They catch HIV/AIDS. Our children are beaten in school and won't go there. Some become prostitutes. They are not allowed to hunt. They fight because they are bored and get drunk. They are starting to commit su***de. We never saw that before. It hurts to say this. Is this 'development'?

We are not primitive. We live differently to you, but we do not live exactly like our grandparents did, nor do you. Were your ancestors 'primitive'? I don't think so. We respect our ancestors. We love our children. This is the same for all people..."

~Roy Sesana
First People of the Kalahari, Botswana

Full speech by Roy Sesana Accepting the Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm in 2005. https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/roy-sesana-right-livelihood-speech/

24/04/2018

From our concert in Herford, Germany

24/04/2018

From our Macedonian tour...

24/03/2018

Preparing for our Macedonian tour in Skopje, Strumica and Gevgelija. As part of the Festival "Days of Macedonian Music".
With pieces by Jana Andreevska, Aleksandar Pejovski, Kostadin Delinikolov, Tomislav Zografski, Mihailo Trandafilovski, Peter Eötvös, Gyorgy Kurtag, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy and Franz Schubert.

Performance of Artwork Ensemble (Hajdi Elzeser & Nenad Lecic, Pianos; Yoana Varbanova & Andrei Doynikov, Percussion) in the amazing Space Hangar 21 during th...

23/06/2017

Another review on our concert last Saturday.

Zwei Klaviere und zwei Schlagzeuge: Für diese Besetzung schrieb Bela Bartok 1937 seine „Sonate für zwei Klaviere und Schlagzeug“. Was sich mit dieser reizvol...

19/06/2017

Das Artwork Ensemble in Aktion… es war großartig! Danke an die vier Musiker Hajdi Elzeser, Yoana Varbanova, Nenad Lecic und Andrey Doynikov sowie Martin Christoph Redel; danke aber auch allen, die sich hinter den Kulissen beteiligt haben – allen voran Judith Kara von Art la Danse, Jörg Gillwald von Klaviatour und Jörg Winkler von der musa! Und Dank für die Förderung und das Vertrauen geht natürlich auch an das Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur und die Niedersächsische Gesellschaft für Neue Musik! Die Mühe hat sich gelohnt!
(c) Noreen Hirschfeld

14/06/2017

А talk with the composer Martin Christoph Redel - the former compostition professor at the Detmold Hochschule. This talk is about him in general and about the piece "Resonanzen" - a piece for two pianos and two percussionists that we played as world premiere during the first Festival for Contemporary Music in Detmold seven years ago. "Resonanzen" is on our repertoire tomorrow evening and in Göttingen on Saturday evening , too.

14/06/2017

Liebe Detmolder Freunde! Morgen Abend um 19:30Uhr im Schlagzeughaus spielen wir - Artwork Ensemble - unserer Programm für unserer Konzert in Göttingen zwei Tage später. Mit Musik von Bartok, Redel, Crumb und B. Schumann. Ihr seid herzlich willkommen!

10/06/2017

A little talk on performance of George Crumb's "Music for a Summer Evening" with Bernd Schumann - the organiser of the concert of Artwork Ensemble next Saturday in Göttingen!

29/05/2017

This is the poster of our next concert on June 17, as part of the concert series "Evenings of Contemporary Music" in Göttingen. Two days before that we play the same concert in Detmold, at the Percussion Haus of the Hochschule für Musik.

The program:
M. Ch. Redel: Resonanzen
Bernd Schumann: Ungestörte Kreise (für Hajdi Elzeser und das Artwork Ensemble) - World Premiere
B. Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and
G. Crumb: Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III)

We would be very happy to see you there! :)
Hajdi Heidi Elzeser Elsässer and Nenad Lečić, Pianos
Yoana Varbanova and Andrey Doynikov, Percussion

Hier das Plakat für unser nächstes Konzert am 17. Juni! Vormerken!