Gessnerallee
Zürich

Rosemary Brown, widow and mother of two, lives in a town house in Balham, South London. In November 1964 the ghost of Franz Liszt visits her and asks her if he could dictate a couple of compositions to her which he could not finish in his lifetime. Shortly after this incident, Johann Sebastian Bach comes to her with the same wish – and immediately after this there are Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, John Lennon and Ludwig van Beethoven. In the following years Brown gets up at half past six every morning, has breakfast and then receives deceased composers for a musical dictation between eight and two and between three and six o’clock. These sessions create among other works a forty pages long sonata and twelve Lieder by Schubert, a fantaisie impromptu by Chopin and two sonatas as well as the tenth and eleventh symphonies by Beethoven. Rosemary Brown herself dies in London in 2001.
Twelve years later her partitions become the starting point of a cheerful evening with ghosts for three musicians, one actor and one actress.

The Zurich based musician and director Thom Luz works at Theater Basel, Oldenburgisches Staattheater, Kaserne Basel, Gessnerallee Zürich among many other places. His works have toured internationally, for instance to Recklinghauser Festspiele, Theaterformen Hannover, PAZZ Oldenburg. This November, When I die is going to be performed at Spielartfestival in Munich and will then celebrate its Swiss premiere at the Gessnerallee.

→ More performances at the Gessnerallee from 13 – 16 Feb 2014