With arrangements between electronics and acoustics, classical piano and Indian santoor, strict score and free improvisation, OMG Schubert and the Babylon ORCHESTRA Berlin explore the DNA of the concept of classical music and its relevance for today, here & now in this freshly baked programme.

In the process, the question arises again and again on which pedestal Europe has placed this concept and its musical heroes, what it is actually made of and whether it is still valid today. The result is stylistically immanent classical compositions and unusual avant-garde sounds that are broken across genres and cultures. OMG Schubert feat. Babylon ORCHESTRA create a space of experience and sound that has never been heard before. The arrangements, created in collaboration between the two ensembles, oscillate between electronics and acoustics, classical piano and Indian santoor, strict score and free improvisation - all the way to a cathartic scream.

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OMG Schubert are Konstantin Dupelius and Justus Wilcken, who have made it their mission to rethink and radically reinterpret song & music theatre as an art form, both compositionally and performatively. As multi-instrumentalists, singers, actors and composers, they get to the heart of old classics, they recompose and stage their works across genres with electronics, synthesiser and electric guitar. In collaboration with other artists (e.g. Wilhelm Rinke, video art), they question Eurocentric concepts of art in their programmes and show how much historical heroines are children of their time and how current their existential conflicts still are today.
The OMG Schubert productions have been shown at the Funkhaus Berlin, the Schauspiel Hannover and the Hidalgo Festival Munich. The second production WTF 1770 - Hölderlin//Beethoven was the first premiere in Baden-Württemberg after the lockdown in June 2020 at the ITZ Tübingen and became a great success with a fulminant press echo (among others Die Deutsche Bühne, SWR, Nachtkritik.) In their third production BTW Wagner - Siegfried, bist du's? OMG Schubert took on the Godfather of music theatre: Richard Wagner. Premiere on 11.12.2021 at the ITZ Tübingen. Outside of their duo, the musicians perform at the Salzburg Festival, Theater Freiburg, Staatstheater Hannover, Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and Schauspiel Stuttgart, among others.

Babylon ORCHESTRA is a young Berlin ensemble for urban Middle Eastern music - consisting of about 15 musicians and singers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Russia, Italy, France, Kurdistan and Germany. The idea to found the ensemble came to Mischa Tangian and Sofia Surgutschowa at the beginning of 2016, when they were looking for a very personal response and reaction to a changing world with new forms of cultural togetherness.
The ensemble particularly promotes new creations in which musicians from all cultural backgrounds can participate, as it only sees a chance for honest, personal artistic expression in contemporary music and understands the further development of musical language as a way of connecting tradition to the present and the now.