Between Two Deaths: Concert performance with participation of Masterstudio Scenography of HGK Basel

On 19 February 2026, a former bank building in Basel will be the venue for the interdisciplinary concert performance ‘Between Two Deaths’ featuring around 30 Master's students from the Basel Academy of Music and the HGK Basel.

On Thursday, 19 February 2026, from 6 to 9 pm, around 20 rooms of a former bank building on Rittergasse 21 in Basel will become the venue for an interdisciplinary concert performance entitled ‘Between Two Deaths’. The central reference for this project is the ‘tombeau’ – a musical genre from the 16th to 18th centuries that was dedicated to the memory of the deceased. 

A main focus of this collaborative project between installation, performance and early music is on rooms in the basement, the former vault rooms and rather inaccessible places that allow for intimate listening situations. The aim is to critically reflect on a state between two deaths, between capital and exhaustion, between growth and stagnation, between survival and a meritocracy. The audience is invited to move freely around the building and experience spaces of transition, uncertainty, in-between, exhaustion and transformation. 

A total of around thirty students from three Master's programmes at the Basel Academy of Music FHNW and the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW are involved in the concert performance ‘Between Two Deaths’: students from the Mastertudio Scenography at HGK Basel, Master's students from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis at the Basel Academy of Music as well as students from the Master's programme Music and Scene in Transformation at the Basel Academy of Music. 

The project was led by Prof. Andreas Wenger, Head of the Masterstudio Scenography at the HGK Basel; Martina Ehleiter, Lecturer at the Institute Contemporary Design Practices (ICDP) at the HGK Basel; Prof. Raphael Sbrzesny, Head of the Master's programme in Music and Scene in Transformation at the Basel Academy of Music; Johannes Keller, lecturer at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis; Dr. Martina Papiro, lecturer in music history at the Basel Academy of Music; Deda Cristina Colonna, lecturer at the Basel Academy of Music; Michael Kleine, director; and Ellen Blumenstein, author and curator. 

The title refers to the exhibition project ‘Between Two Deaths’ curated by Ellen Blumenstein and Felix Ensslin at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe in 2007. 

Admission to the concert performance is free.