PROPHETS: A Contemporary Music Workshop with composer Alexander Manotskov

St.-Matthäus-Kirche
Public presentation

PROPHETS
A Contemporary Music Workshop
with composer Alexander Manotskov

Composer, musician, and teacher Alexander Manotskov, a long-time collaborator of Kirill Serebrennikov, and the composer of the music for Der Schneesturm, invites participants into a unique experiment at the intersection of music, theater, and performance.

The workshop is built around Manotskov’s original music-theater piece Prophets. According to the composer, when a truth or a warning about the future needs to be conveyed, it sometimes appears in the form of prophecy. Those chosen to carry such messages are not always willing to do so, and their words are often met with doubt and rejection.

Over the course of three days, the participants will work with the composer, exploring voice, rhythm, movement, and new forms of musical communication. Instead of a conventional score, each participant will receive an individual soundtrack through headphones—a sequence of sounds, rhythms, tones, actions, and instructions that only they can hear. Like prophets, they will be asked to interpret these messages and transmit them to others.

The workshop will culminate in a public presentation of Prophets. Created through a process of intensive rehearsals and collective exploration, the performance embraces spontaneity, imperfection, and the necessity of reacting in the moment. The audience is invited to witness a living musical structure in which listening becomes performance, and performance becomes an act of transmission.