Matthias Ockert's Polytheistic Ensemble: re.flex

Energy-charged games fans, cool grooves and risky sound architectures − the new piece by Matthias Ockert and his Polytheistic Ensemble promises a thrilling program on the stage. »re.flex« takes up the musical relationship of man and machine and thus connects contemporary music with jazz and electronics. The sensors around the extended instruments facilitate the integration of the musicians with electronics and live visuals. Pictures of fantastic instruments of new sound worlds emerge through video recordings from robots of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), as well as industrial production processes.

The unconventional line-up with electric guitars, sopranos, trumpets, violins, violoncello, contrabass, drums, live electronics and video voices, as well as live visuals, brings together composition, improvisation and visual art. The public is invited to immerse itself in an associative, oscillating cosmos comprising polystylistic sounds and images inspired by a pantheon of musical models.

In 2012, the Polytheistic Ensemble celebrated its debut and is now guest at the ZKM for the second time. The Polytheistic Ensemble is a flexible laboratory for contemporary chamber music and performing art: melodious, serious architectonic conception as well as its playful and entertaining transgression. The groove-stressed melodies are supplemented by hypnotizing video images, which are musically integrated in loops, ellipses, cycles and parallels.