For his Lounge Act at the Thek Lounge, poet, critic, and artist Wayne Koestenbaum performs piano miniatures (Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schumann, Albéniz, Fauré, Antheil, Poulenc, and others), while incanting spontaneous Sprechstimme-style soliloquies. Koestenbaum’s words—improvised on the spot for the occasion—will stream in correspondence with the musical phrases in the score. Nietzsche might have called this nervy practice a gay science; at the Thek Lounge, we call it confessional Socratic cabaret or stand-up-comic séance pianism. With cocktails and other distractions.
Thek Lounge is presented by Bureau des Services sans Spécificité, Geneva, with Adam Linder, Shahryar Nashat, and Sohrab Mohebbi.