Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insen Tour Part 2
Insen Tour Start - Chemnitz and London
After one week of rehearsals in Berlin we headed towards Chemnitz for the first concert. The day we arrived we had a dinner at the office of the Raster Noton Label which is located on an old farm a bit outside of Chemnitz. Label owner Olaf Bender and his wife prepared a very tasteful buffet of local specialities.
The Insen Tour started successfully the next day on 8th of October in the Opernhaus in Chemnitz. Carsten was celebrated in his hometown, former Karl-Marx-Stadt, where the mayor held a speech before the concert. During the concert i was sitting behind a curtain near to Carsten, in case the patches would stop working. Fortunately everything went fine, except of a short dropout of the MIDI communication with the controllers.
I got very positive feedback from Carsten and Ryuichi about the visuals. But i learned this evening that my name wasn’t mentioned on any of the tickets or posters and when i checked the Forma website they wrote about an “on-stage video installation by the artist”.
The next day i was supposed to drive with the equipment truck from Chemnitz to London! That would have been a 15 hour trip. Everyone else would fly from Leipzig. It was kind of funny in the end: i got a low-budget airline flight from Altenburg and i arrived in London several hours before the others, who booked from Leipzig, because Mr. Sakamoto got a first class ticket (which he deserves), which was not available from Altenburg.
In London the concert took place on 10th of October at the Barbican, which is a Building made of concrete that is a city in its own. I really dig the architecture. The architect supposedly committed suicide, jumping from one of the two Barbican Towers, because the architecture of the whole building got harsh criticism after it was finished. The concert hall of the Barbican has about 1800 seats and was sold out.
At this concert i was sitting right in front of the mixing desk and had a perfect view. I was very impressed and liked the concert a lot. At one time during “Xerox” the visuals stucked for a second and so did my heart. But immediately they continued moving and it took a load off my mind.
After the concert we drove to an after party in a club with a cab. Someone asked me about the visuals and congratulated because he liked them very much. It turned out to be a product designer from Nokia who worked together with Ryuichi Sakamoto on a mobile phone. Although i didn’t realize it on the spot while drinking my beer at the bar, after the after party it was said that Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys has been there as well as other celebrities.
Tour Dates of the first Insen Tour
08 Oct 05 | Opernhaus, Chemnitz, DE [world premiere]
10 Oct 05 | Barbican, London, UK
13 Oct 05 | La Cigale, Paris, FR
15 Oct 05 | Volksbühne, Berlin, DE
19 Oct 05 | Cinema Teatro, Chiasso, CH
22 Oct 05 | Romaeuropa Festival 2005 | Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, IT
24 Oct 05 | Teatro Manzoni, Milan, IT
28 Oct 05 | Palazzina Ex-Gil, Bari, IT
30 Oct 05 | Teatro Communale di Modena, IT
31 Oct 05 | Teatro Nuovo, Giovanni da Udine, IT
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