Gosse & Glamour - Echo der Moderne

Many of Kurt Weill's songs are known worldwide, and some have become jazz standards - "Speak Low", "My Ship", and "Mack the Knife" among them. In Germany, he is mostly remembered for the works he created before fleeing to America: The Threepenny Opera and the Mahagonny Songspiel. His Broadway pieces - "Street Scene", "One Touch of Venus", "Lady in the Dark" - are rarely heard there.

What does any of this have to do with ORSO (Orchestra & Choral Society e. V.)? ORSO was founded by Wolfgang Roese, who grew up in Kippenheim. He now lives in Berlin, the city where Kurt Weill wrote The Threepenny Opera. Back in Kippenheim, just two houses from where Roese grew up, lived Weill's parents Albert and Emma. Albert was a cantor at the Kippenheim synagogue. It was there that the ORSOvocals launched an extraordinary performance last summer under the title "Gosse & Glamour". It began in the synagogue, then the choir and orchestra moved through the village singing, dancing and playing, stopped in the courtyard of the Rindfuß inn (the Weill family home), and finally made their way to the Bürgerhaus for a rousing finale.

ORSOvocals are the voices of the ORSO choir from Berlin, Stuttgart and Freiburg. They take on the characters from Weill's works and bring the wild 1920s and dark 1930s to the Theaterhaus stage in a spirited revue. They perform under the direction of Wolfgang Roese at the piano, drawing on Weill's greatest hits from both his German and American periods.