Questions to Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris

WHO ARE YOU?
DO Manos Tsangaris is a Greek Rhinelander. A composer who has dealt for decades with music theater and with very different formats. Percussionist, native of Cologne …  Did I describe you well enough?

MT Together we are DOMTS: Daniel Ott and Manos Tsangaris. And this DO, an original Swiss-Berliner composer – who has a fatal tendency to work with other people, who also likes to work in landscape compositions, who listens to nature and the environment and transforms all of that into compositional thinking. And we together …

DO ... yes, together we work small-big. For a while Manos leaned toward very small formats, toward music theater in small spaces, sometimes with ten participants and one member of the audience – he thus reversed the customary relationship between the audience and the performers. Manos, however, sometimes also thinks very big, and I sometimes think very tiny.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? ALONE? TOGETHER?
DO Manos can play the drums and compose. And together we can conceive a biennale.

MT The two of us can be doubtful and decide things, the two of us can …

DO … interrupt each other, we can't do that when we're alone.

MT The two of us can contradict one other.

DO We can argue, we can discuss …

MT … we can check out young artists, with each other. And alone: sleep.

WHAT SHOULD NEW MUSIC THEATER DO?
MT It should do nothing at all. It can do a lot and shouldn't have to do anything, then it wouldn't be what it is about.

DO Music theater could change the world, it can get involved in social, political processes, and it's very important to me that music theater instigates dialogues.

MT To me it's important that it can become art.

DO Art also means: communication.

MT I have no idea.

WHERE DOES MUSIC THEATER STAND TODAY? COMPARED TO 20 YEARS AGO?
MT We're living in a world that has many more voices than 20 years ago. Video and loudspeakers are omnipresent in everyday life. The machines of the general public reach out for us like tentacles. That also has an effect on music theater. The formats are more flexible. Compositional thinking faces completely different challenges nowadays. The game has been expanded and requires precise rules and developments ...

DO ... that constantly want to be discovered anew.

THE ROLE OF THE COMPOSER?
DO The role of the composer in music theater is very central. We have often talked about writing, about the fact that processes can be notated. To me the composer is also a team player who, when he creates music theater, has to think together with people from other crafts, has to talk about what will become of the »music theater« genre, and where his role is.

MT To write works that are good.

WHAT IS THE MUNICH BIENNALE?

MT A laboratory and a celebration.

WHAT DOES THE BIENNALE WANT TO DO?
DO The Munich Biennale would like to communicate, but it would also like to try things. And perhaps it doesn't yet know everything that it would like in five years. Most of all, the Biennale wants to engage in processes. Engage in processes, and in dialogues with young artists who want to »create art«. But it would also like to engage in a dialogue with the city, with people who live in Munich. It would like to engage in an audience and ask questions. I believe the Biennale doesn't have all of the answers.

MT To open the space that's necessary and also possible for music theater – that means, one has to do the one thing and cannot ignore the other thing. One has to connect with the possibilities that are inherent – also the formal possibilities and the manner in which pieces are written and performed. But we must also open the space for the unknown.

FOR WHOM?
DO For everyone.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO?
MT To the Biennale. To working with all the people.

DO We are looking forward to sleepless nights, to endless discussions, to disputes, and we are looking forward to the residents of Munich ...