Jens Rosteck | Erik Satie and his time

Among the pioneering composers on the threshold of modernism, the shy eccentric, controversial publicist and oddball calligrapher Erik Satie, whose charming musical language represents a unique contradiction to established art, was not only the bohemian, but also the flâneur par excellence: rogue and melancholic, cabaret artist and avant-gardist, outsider and cult figure, mocker and man of letters.

Absurd and experimental, innovative and archaic, laconic and focused on the essentials: These are the characteristics of his ultra-short instrumental miniatures and tautological songs.

Jens Rosteck, a doctor of cultural history, biographer, musicologist, pianist and specialist in French modernism, takes us on a literary promenade through the north of Paris, in the course of which he also performs several piano works by the "cultivated dilettante", fascinating maverick and idiosyncratic pre-Dadaist. An extensive, vivid picture show complements his "satirical" Montmartre panorama.

The program includes: Excerpts from the cycles Gnossiennes, Gymnopédies, Sports et Divertissements and Pièces froides, Gambades, cabaret chansons and film music.

Event in cooperation with the Centre Culturel Français and the Frankreich Zentrum in Freiburg