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Westward! Around the World in 80 Minutes
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A musical journey around the globe – with a symphony orchestra as your guide.
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In just 80 minutes, this extraordinary concert takes audiences on a musical journey through Europe, America, Asia and Africa. The journey begins in Germany with Johann Sebastian Bach and continues through France, Ireland, Portugal and South America, across Mexico and the cultures of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, all the way to Japan, China and Iran. Via Ukraine and other Slavic countries, the journey eventually continues to Africa and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, before returning to Germany.
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Music and images come together to create a spectacular multimedia concert journey. On screen, landscapes, cities and cultural impressions come to life, while the symphony orchestra brings different musical worlds to life on stage. Traditional sounds meet classical compositions, Fado meets symphonic music, Latin American rhythms meet European orchestral colors, and Eastern musical traditions meet Western ones.
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Special moments arise from the combination of live music and video: musicians from different parts of the world become part of the concert through specially recorded videos, creating a musical connection across geographical and cultural borders. A composition by Ivan Knežević, featuring the outstanding sitar player Hindol Deb, creates a musical bridge between East and West. Reza Valis combines Persian and Western musical traditions, while Hey Sokoli demonstrates how a song can create new musical identities across national borders.
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The Highlight and Finale of the Project
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The highlight of Around the World in 80 Minutes is the project “We Are the World.” The idea came from Michael Krauß, Chairman of the Friends of the Pfalztheater association, and was developed together with ICstrings. It became a special contribution to Kaiserslautern's 750th anniversary celebrations.
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More than 1,000 children from Kaiserslautern became part of this special musical journey and came together in a shared video.
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The video was specially produced for the project and premiered at the end of the concert. The circle closes: after a musical journey through different countries, cultures and eras, the concert ends not with individual musicians at the center, but with a whole community of children singing “We Are the World” together.
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This video became the culmination of the entire project – a shared moment that makes the central message of the concert visible and audible in a unique way.
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“Around the World in 80 Minutes” is a project by ICstrings, Caroline Busser and Ivan Knežević. Both artists are not only the creative minds behind the project, but also appear as soloists with the orchestra in selected works. The journey becomes a personal musical encounter in which different cultures, instruments and musical worlds come together.
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From Bach to Gospel, from Fado to the sounds of the sitar, from Latin American rhythms to Slavic melodies – “Around the World in 80 Minutes” tells the story of the diversity of our cultures and, at the same time, of what connects us all: music.
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A journey without borders. A world full of sound. And an orchestra that brings it all together.
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