In contrast to a present oriented toward effectiveness and utility, there is a great virtue of “waste”: devotion. It is one of the wonders of the human species – what would be our cooperation, what would be the history of mankind without devotion? And how strange: surrendering, letting go of much and giving up, man grows beyond himself. In love and in music we can experience what experience and dimension devotion opens up: it transcends space and time. What can musicians tell us about this, using the examples of Bach’s compositions and Arabic folk music?

In the stage space of Bach’s music theater “The Devil in the Elevator”, the lobby of the “Hotel Heaven”, we will begin with a common, quite contentious investigation and with our own explorations of this special gift of man. Perhaps devotion can be further developed as an active form of communication – for daily life, in the encounter with oneself and the other(s). The hosts are the health researcher, neuroscientist, physician and author Prof. Dr. Tobias Esch, the artistic director of the Neukölln Opera and Wunderkammer series Bernhard Glocksin, the harpsichordist Elina Albach and the Moroccan oud virtuoso Alaa Zouiten.

With Prof. Dr. Tobias Esch (Uni Witten-Herdecke), Bernhard Glocksin, Elina Albach (Cembalo), Alaa Zouiten (Oud).