Graindelavoix

The currently most innovative vocal ensemble for early music from Antwerp presents concerts as expansive performances and creates unleashed sound experiences. In St. Getrud Church, it presents The Liberation of the Gothic, a program with dazzling English flamboyant polyphony written by Thomas Ashwell and John Browne just before the 16th century English reformation that almost by miracle survived the iconoclasm.

With his vocal ensemble Graindelavoix, founded in 1999, Belgian musician and anthropologist Björn Schmelzer is considered a specialist in the field of so-called early music, i.e. the music of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque. Instead of attempting exact reproductions of historical pieces, the ensemble focuses on a contemporary performance practice with voices of different genders and musical cultures, whose special vocal techniques, ornamentation and improvisational methods impressively expand the vocal sound spectrum. The heterogeneous sound expresses the individuality of the participants and allows for emancipatory participation instead of mere submission to the historical grandeur of the source material. A profound engagement with the architecture and sound of the performance sites have made Graindelavoix one of the most sensational and unconventional ensembles, in whose live interpretations the quality of the pieces can also be physically experienced. After the group around Schmelzer was already represented at last year's Summer Festival with a work at the Hamburg Kunstverein, it now comes to Hamburg for two concerts in the St. Gertrud Church. The Liberation of the Gothic was also released as an album in 2019and received euphoric reviews in the press.

20 minutes before the start of each performance, Björn Schmelzer will give a short introduction to the work.Program as PDF-Download here!

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