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Style: World - Musictheatre
Origin: Austria
Touring party: 21
Territory: Europe
Availability: on request 2011/2012/2013

The Project:
In the Faces and Places production, 11 musicians from 6 nations recount the personal histories of four musicians from Burkina Faso, Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba who, coming from various situations and following a variety of paths, have ended up in the musical country of Austria and here perform a juggling act with survival and art.
In their crossover-project embodying music, performance, film and theatre, people from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Italy, Cuba, Austria and Venezuela present their art and their lives, illustrate their paths to and through Austria, the tightrope performances and acrobatic tricks demanded by an existence such as theirs.
An intimate and, at the same time, colourful stage show that was developed out of biographical documentary material. Personal histories, video projection, sound and image sculptures blend with the music to form an intoxicating musical and theatrical performance which, on the one hand, presents personalities and, on the other, puts into sharp focus the happenstances and cooperation arising from global humankind.
The fact that so much trans-cultural fusion ultimately results in the breaching of the stage and auditorium is of course intentional: “FACES AND PLACES” has the potential to turn into a gigantic dance party.
Ultimately dancing is one of the paths for people to take in order to approach one another with the greatest ease, wherever they come from, wherever they are headed.

They have one thing in common: their place of birth is far away (thousands of kilometres in many cases) from the city in which they live. And they have a job that is privileged (in this respect at least): whilst immigrants elsewhere are confronted by prejudice at their place of work too, in the music scene they are largely spared this.
In the interviews, the topic of living in two home countries was therefore kept well away from the much-discussed aspect of racism. The thread running from here to there and back is woven around everyday topics. What does the term “father” mean to a musician whose partner is expecting a baby in the summer and who has a Hungarian adoptive father and a natural father from west Africa? What does the topic of “money” mean to someone born in one of the poorest countries and now living in one of the richest countries in the world? Or is the wealth somewhere else altogether?
Is the vocabulary that was brought along perhaps worth more in a country like Austria, where the native people so determinedly stick to their monolingualism? How does our society shape their artistic careers, how do we receive the art they have to offer? What are they for us: something exotic, entertainers, mediators of culture?

The Music:
With regard to musical composition, my approach was to provide the ensemble as a tool for the invited artists, Mamadou Diabaté, Ismael Barrios, Silvio Gabriel and Edison Tadeu.
This potential was harnessed in very different ways, ranging from an open and highly experimental approach to collaborative exploration through to solo performances of commissions, with everything in between. At one of the first rehearsals, Mamadou showed us a few phrases and left us completely at a loss regarding what he wanted right till very late. Silvio was nervous because Mamadou did not give him any lyrics. Ismael opened up vistas of traditional Venezuelan music and, for himself, a return to his very first instrument, the cuatro.
This created a very open workshop-like character which, via various routes, developed into the current overall format in which the cultural layers so wonderfully interleave. The ensemble’s identity was expressed through a commission for a composition/arrangement by the Austrian violinist Tscho Theissing, whom I asked to write an overture like a >Deix image< (note: Manfred Deix, painter and caricaturist of the Austrian soul). Which he resolved in a fantastic way.
Günter Meinhart


Faces & Places Artistic Team:
Günter Meinhart / Idea, concept, direction, percussion
Ismael Barrios / conga, percussion
Mamadou Diabaté / balaphone, gjoni, vocals, composition
Silvio Gabriel / vocals, guiro
Edison Tadeu da Silva / percussion, vocals
Alberto Lovison / marimbaphone, vibraphone
Raphael Meinhart / vibraphone, marimbaphone, composition
Grilli Pollheimer / xylophone, glockenspiel, percussion
Bernhard Richter / marimbaphone, composition
Jörg Haberl / drums
Stefan Padinger / bass
Meily Gonzalez / vocals, dance
Yenny Gonzalez / vocals, dance
Alejandra Ipolitti / vocals, dance
Mariano Leal / vocals, percussion
Herwig Baumgartner / video
Stefan Schmid / video
Jürgen Fehringer / sound design
Eugen Schöberl / light design