Orgel-Mixturen: Celebrates Contemporary Organ Repertoire

Friends of adventurous Organ repertoire are in for a treat. Cologne’s Jesuite Church of Saint Peter has invited the cream of the crop of Europe’s Organ elite to perform at its International “Orgel-Mixturen” festival. The event is a mixture between scintillating concerts as well as a cornucopia of workshops and seminars for aspiring students of the instrument. Because all of these will be organised and conducted by the same line-up of artists and teachers, the borders between theory and practise are bound to evaporate and turn to dust – all the more so as the aforementioned workshops will culminate in a celebratory mass on the final two days of the festival, actively hosted and conducted by the participants. Even though the program and artistic line-up are enough to justify a visit on their own, the church’s renowned “New Music Organ” is sure to draw a lot of attention as well: Resident Dominik Susteck, who holds a monthly improvisational session at Sankt Peter, for example, has stated that it was “different from all other instruments he has played in his life” and that playing it was like holding a “butterfly in one hand and a storm in the other”.