Hey, June! 30Y Szentimentálé
Bartók Béla National Concert Hall 30Y has begun a complex experimental project for its songs to be performed by a 15-strong band. The fact that there are classical musicians among them suggests that there are no boundaries in this context, that music occupies a single universe. That music is a matter of time; that the alternating stretches of sound and silence create and provide the basis for the creative playing at the dramatic core of the 2013 Szentimentálé tour. This is not a performance of musical theatre, but an idiosyncratic form of concert in which musical happenings are brought into sharper focus by the visual elements of the show. Both within our borders and beyond, Szentimentálé performances typically take place in spaces where rock ’n’ roll bands rarely venture: in classical concert halls and theatres, in meadows or country manors, or in little south-western villages. These spaces, however, do not cease to exist after each concert in the way they existed before the concert. These still existing spaces – in which Szentimentálé nevertheless leaves its mark – travel onwards from show to show, leaving their mark on the performances to follow. Thus the group arrives at the Palace of Arts, where there is room for an entire country. The set design of the concert – projected onto the members of the band and the special stage elements – will redefine the performances of the Szentimentálé tour so far within the context of the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, just as it will constantly rearrange the space of the closing concert to maintain a continuous relationship with the live spectacle, the real objects within the concert space and, above all, the songs of Szentimentálé.