Olympiapark in the Dark

The title of Resident Director Thom Luz’s first work at the Residenztheater is based on the composition of almost the same name by the American musical pioneer Charles Ives, the 1906 work «Central Park in the Dark», in which a chamber orchestra recreates the sounds of the New York city park at night. Concertgoers hear the silence of the evening, the casino behind the pond, arguments between people passing by, night owls, a passing street band and a popular song from one of the nearby apartments behind the trees – arranged for strings, brass and two out of tune pianos.

Luz now uses this principle of vertical composition – a compositional technique in which sounds are laid over the top of each other like folded shirts in a wardrobe rather than hung up individually – for an acoustic walk through Munich to the Olympiapark. Don’t worry, you can stay in your seats: on stage a team of sound specialists will work on a Munich version of Ives’s symphony. It is planned to include scraps of rarely heard music from different centuries, strolling writers, arguing painters, lonely comedians, a range of hymns – and the closer we get to the park and the darker it becomes, we are increasingly also aware of the whispers of the city’s ghosts and Bavaria’s hidden secrets. Because thanks to Albert Einstein, whose childhood address we will also pass, we know: nothing is ever really forgotten, time folds and stretches according to its own will and space is full of holes through which all kinds of possible and impossible worlds can be seen and heard at any point. At the same time: detours give us a better sense of place and the more keenly we look, the less we understand. 

Thom Luz has won numerous awards for his playful musical explorations of the unsayable, including invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2015, 2017 and 2019.