Berlin’s Berghain technoclub is located in a former power plant.
“Classical musicians are no strangers to clubs,” writes Jeffrey Arlo Brown in Friday’s (3/10) New York Times. “In 2001, the record label Deutsche Grammophon founded a concert series, Yellow Lounge, that included performances in places like [Berlin’s] Berghain. Separately, classical artists have often attended Berghain’s techno Klubnächte, or club nights—a rave with queer origins that attracts locals and techno pilgrims from around the world, and often lasts from midnight Saturday to late Monday. They emerge with encouragement and inspiration. When [composer Ashley] Fure first went to Berghain, a performance the year before of ‘The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects’ (2017), which she created with her architect brother, Adam Fure, was fresh in her mind. That work uses subwoofers, aircraft cables, vocalists, instruments and abstract set design and choreography to dramatize the vast scale of climate change. Fure felt at home in this genre, somewhere between abstract contemporary opera and sound art … The experience at Berghain in 2018 encouraged Fure to focus more resolutely on her immersive compositions…. That confirmation has been a common experience for composers who visit Berghain,” among them Wojtek Blecharz, Joshua Fineberg, and Sergej Newski as well as viol player Liam Byrne and violinist Ashot Sarkissjan.
