Festival project of the 40th Leipziger Jazztage

Bonn-born drummer and composer Beat Freisen presents his piece "Letting in the Jungle" based on Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" for the first time. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the British poet's birth (and the 10th anniversary of Freisen's band), he expands his Spelunkenorchester (jazz piano trio plus string quartet) for this project to include a classical vocal quartet, a wind octet and two guitarists - thus encountering Kipling's luminous language with a wide color palette of musical expressions. Kipling's short story "Letting in the Jungle" forms the form-giving libretto for a Singspiel and unfolds a truly operatic scenario. The compositions by Beat Freisen and Johannes Dittmar, together with the top-class ensemble (conductor: Jobst Liebrecht), attempt to musically capture the wild, unpredictable beauty of the original Jungle Book stories.
Jobst Liebrecht - Conductor
Amélie Saadia (mezzo-soprano) - Mowgli
Ramina Abdulla-zadè (soprano) - Bagheera the panther
Daniel Arnaldos (tenor) - Akela the lone wolf, Hathi the elephant
Joachim Holzhey (bass-baritone) - narrator
Kirill Suvorov - flute
Rustem Sakhabiev - flute
Pierre-Yves Locher - clarinet, bass clarinet
Henrik Walsdorff - alto saxophone
Tom Arthurs - trumpet
Richard Koch - trumpet
Gerhard Geschlößl - trombone
Janni Struzyk - tuba
Hannes Buder - guitar
Evgeny Beleninov - guitar
Beat Freisen's Spelunkenorchester:
Marjolaine Locher - violin
Josefine Andronic - violin
Johannes Dittmar - viola, composition
Isabelle Klemt - violoncello
Robert Lucaciu - double bass
Beat Freisen - drums, percussion, composition (with Johannes Dittmar)
The Spelunkenorchester opens the first major concert evening at the Opera House, where two other "Schöne Künste" festival projects will premiere: Ketil Bjørnstad's "Images/Edvard Munch" as well as Julia Hülsmann with her quartet and Theo Bleckmann with "The Root - poetry set to music from four centuries from Dickinson to Shakespeare to Whitman".
Tickets between 19 and 50 euros since July 1, 2016 at all known sales points.