The Keepers of the Flame (2017) ca. 40 min

Composers: David Krakauer & Kathleen Tagg

I. Humans
II. The Whispering of the Earth
III. The Keepers of the Flame
IV. Offerings and Bridges
V. Trapped in the Machine
VI. Lullabies in a World Without Children
VII. The Geyser

In 2017, Krakauer & Tagg created a new large-scale work at the Borderlands Foundation in Sejny, Poland. The Keepers of the Flame is intended as an artistic response with the Invisible Bridge Orchestra to the challenges of the modern world, and demands a culture of solidarity in response to the threat of deepening social and cultural divisions. For the original performance in Poland, a magical experience came from an encounter between the artistic explorations of David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg, and all the other musicians as a collective rumination on the fate of exile and wander.

The piece was designed to be transferred to multiple different settings, contexts, and communities, while dealing with the expansive ideas of bridge-building, listening, offering, and inclusion from each musician and the fact that each of us has a multiplicity of different contexts and roles, depending on our situations. The original creation was designed for the multi-generational Sejny klezmer band, a community initiative of the Borderlands Foundation, which sought to honor the space in which the Borderlands’ Cultural Dialogue Center is housed: a former Jewish synagogue, home to the Jews of Sejny, formerly 24% of the population, and now a town with zero Jewish residents. During an intensive collaborative workshop period at Krasnagruda that incorporated contributions from the klezmer orchestra under the direction of Wojciech Szroeder and special guests: Shadi Al Maghrabi (oud, Syria-Germany), Jehad Jazbeh (violin, Syria-Germany), Youssef Nassif (kanun, Syria-Germany), Mykhaylo "Manu" Balogh (saxophone, Ukraine-Poland), their arts dialogue in a borderland area (Poland, Lithuania, Belarus) with Catholics, Protestants, Russian Old Believers and others, created a living tribute to the Jewish music, once silenced, by creating a band that performs klezmer music as a living form.

Ideas from the original The Keepers of the Flame project can be merged with the new cultural perspectives of musicians living and working in a specific location, and will yield a completely new piece depending on the locale and performers. As the piece requires input, musical offerings, and sharing from all musicians present, an intensive workshop period is required before the performance. The ideal performance of this work would also create a specialized performance designed for the room, and with heightened theatrical lighting.