Pat Metheny in Wroclaw

The worldclass guitarist will be a star of the autumn edition of Ethno Jazz Festival 2011. The artist will have a concert on 6 November in Wroclaw’s Hala Orbita to the accompaniment of great musicians from his trio – Larry Grenadier playing the contrabass and Bill Stewart the drums.

Pat Metheny was born on 12 August 1954 in Kansas in a musical family. When he was 8 he started playing the trumpet and four years later he changed to the guitar. After that he started working with the best jazz bands in his state, getting great experience at young age. His professional debut on the international stage was in 1974.

Pat Metheny practised his skills at Miami University and famous Berklee College of Music in Boston. They were noticed by a professor and vibraphonist Gary Burton who proposed Pat Metheny to cooperate with him. Metheny spent 3 years in Gary Burton’s band where he showed characteristic style that was a mix of free articulation and rhythmically and harmonically advanced sensitivity.

In few years he got the title of the Best Jazz Guitarist in a lot of questionnaires and got a lot of gold record for albums: (Still Life) Talking”, ”Letter from Home” and ”Secret Story”. He also got Grammy Award in different categories six times: The Best Rock Instrumentation, The Best Modern Jazz Recording, The Best Jazz Solo Instrumentation, The Best Instrumental Composition. Unprecedentedly Pat Metheny Group got 7th times in turn the Grammy Award for 7subsequent albums.

Tickets

Source: Ethno Jazz Festival

6th International Theatrical Festival Dialog

The International Theatrical Festival Dialog that was organized for the first time in 2001 and became very popular because of presenting great plays. The main aim of the festival is to try to define artistic, social and ideological needs that the theatre has to face and its place in the process of globalization and integration.

Like the previous editions, this year edition will present the most interesting plays of world theatre of the last two seasons versus great plays of Polish artists – not only well known but also debutants. New trends, different styles and brave attempts to define the spirit condition of Europe and the world – this is the topic of the 6^th edition of International Theatrical Festival Dialog.

This festival will take place in Wrocław on 8-15 October 2011. The well known artists Ivo van Hove and Romeo Castellucci invite Modern Theatre from Wroclaw to cooperate with their international projects. In the programme of the festiwal one can find:

– Theatre Milagros from Santiago (Chile), ”Coat” by Gogol, this is the story about fiction and location of the meaning of life in an object – a coat, and the character of narrator is illustrated by an anime puppet;

– Compana La Resentida from Santiago (Chile), ”Simulacro” directed by Marco Layer – the group of young, rebellious people are saying about their attitude to modern Chile trying to define their own position in the country;

– Les Ballets C de la B from Brussel (Belgium), ”Gardenia” directed by Alain Platel – it’s a history about identity, belonging to gender, art and senility involving two professional actors and 7 comedy artists- transvestites;

– Associazione Raffaello Sanzio from Cesena (Italy), ”About the face. Image of God’s Son” directed by Romeo Castellucci, is a very personal project, the director is trying to comfort himself with the Jesus, raising philosophical questions about the meaning of life, God existence;

– ToneelgroepAmsterdam from Amsterdam (Holland), ”Russians! Płatonov meets Ivanow”, director Ivo van Hove; in his project he studies the situation of modern, intelligent man through the prism of two main characters of Czechow’s works.

Source:PIK

Art Nouveau tenement house in Prusa Street

The dynamic development of Wroclaw at the turn of the XIXth and XXth century evolved in different directions, one of them was the expansion of buildings rents on the right side of the Odra river. The urban plans that were designed for this district in the 70s of the XIXth century caused that Wroclaw got a very colourful streets: Nowowiejska, Jedności Narodowej and Prusa.

In the intersection of Świętokrzyska and Prusa Street there is located one of the symbols of Wroclaw’s Art Nouveau. The tenement house was designed in 1902 by Wilhelm Heller. The owner of this tenement house was also an architect Bruno Löffelholz. The most characteristic feature of this building is a soft bow elevation curve. The second feature is the painted decoration in the cornice. In the original concept there could have been located the characters of half-naked women in relaxed pose but finally it was changed for the picture of sky with clouds under its ivy winds with solar shield in the centre.

This unique resignation of classic narrow in Wroclaw caused untypical solutions in the indoors. The staircase is located on the outer ends of the tenement house and the flats have the parabolic system of elevation – that’s why the front rooms have the trapeze shape.

Some elements of facade decoration evoke the projects of Hector Guimard a French architect, the precursor of Art Nouveau. His famous project is the entrance to Paris metro and tenement houses in the  rue La Fontaine.

Source: tuwroclaw