KIT at DAS FEST

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) currently is in a festival frenzy: It will make two contributions to “DAS FEST” at Karlsruhe from July 24 to 26. The new ensembles of the KIT choir and the KIT symphony orchestra will captivate the public at the classics breakfast on Sunday with Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”. Students of architecture will design the environment of the area with light and cuddly seating furniture.

Supporting the merger of the two institutions of Forschungszentrum and Universität Karlsruhe by a joint musical project – this was the idea of the KIT Music Director Nikolaus Indlekofer, Walter Bauer, Director of the Chamber Orchestra of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, and Hans-Jürgen Goebelbecker, Head of the Forschungszentrum’s Central Library and Media Department and passionate amateur musician at the beginning of the ambitious Carmina project. The organizers were happy to receive about 300 applications for participation in the cantata about life as a wheel of destiny and fortune in January this year. At the same time, they faced the challenge of reviewing these applications and selecting the members of the choir and orchestra. After the selection process, rehearsals started in mid-April: 90 orchestra musicians and 150 singers immersed into Orff’s musical interpretation of a collection of medieval love lyrics, scholar poems, drinking songs, and satires. The instrumentalists come from all orchestras of the KIT and are complemented by additional amateur musicians. The singers are members of the university choirs and another 40 vocalists. Since early July, the choir and orchestra have been rehearsing together with the percussion instruments, two pianos, and the children’s choir of the music school in Ettlingen. The sounding body is completed by the soloist Diana Tomsche (soprano), Peter Ribnitzky (tenor), and Armin Kolarczyk (baritone). On July 26, the ensembles will make this “popular piece among the classical works” - according to Goebelbecker - sound from 10.30 h on the main stage of DAS FEST under the direction of Nikolaus Indlekofer.

In 2000 already did the university choir and the Collegium Musicum play the Carmina Burana at the Classics Breakfast. “The organizer Rolf Fluhrer considered it such a highlight that he wished to present it again to the festival audience on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of “DAS FEST””, explains Indlekofer. The organizers will supply the stage technology needed for the concert.

Apart from the auditory enjoyment, students of architecture will enthuse the other senses of the festival visitors. Comfortable “snuggles” – seating furniture made of recycled advertising banners and filled with soft material - will be distributed on the festival site and wait for visitors. They will offer relaxation to up to 10 persons.

The interactive light sculpture Dancegrity created according to the construction principle of a tensegrity, a structure consisting of tension and compression bars, will make the auditory enjoyment fuse with a visible enjoyment. The glow bar and rope construction with a length of 15 m and a height of 4 m will float above the water surface and will start to dance to the music with a dynamic illumination that changes the colors.

Both projects result from a cooperation of the organizers of “DAS FEST” with the KIT Institute of Industrial Building Production (ifib) under the direction of Petra von Both. The institute offers the seminar “Shift to Reality” with a duration of one semester: Future architects are supposed to transfer theoretical findings to reality and to gain team experience in the implementation of their ideas and concepts. “In the education of students, practical relevance is important. It is in the focus of these projects”, underlines the project supervisor Andreas Kindsvater from the ifib.