Finally – we made it after such long times of corona, now we have had our two wonderful concerts at the planetarium of Alexandria in Egypt, as a cooperation of the German Embassy Cairo, the Goethe Institute Alexandria, the planetarium of the famous Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria and ESA astronaut Gerhard Thiele.
It was such a great honour to be invited by the German Embassy in Cairo to have two concerts for the Cultural Department of the Embassy. As it took really long time to plan the trip in order to follow the ups and downs of corona pandemic, we finally found a date, the 29th of March 2022 to plan our performances at the planetarium. All of the different institutions members involved were doing their very best to make the concerts come true. If you have this sort of people with you so engaged, kind and corteous, the trip becomes a great pleasure and great experience.
For our part of STARDUST SINFONIE we were just our guest of honour ESA astronaut Gerhard Thiele, linked via zoom to the planetarium while talking about his space flight , and me – Roswitha Meyer with my flutes – as a solo musician live under the cuppola of the planetarium.
For the planetarium part we worked with Mohamed Aly and Hanaa Hosny and their colleagues.
As we like to do every time we start our performances with programme “BIG PICTURE” we had a switch to the cameras of ISS International Space Station, in order to project what you can see just this moment if you look down to Earth. And yes : it worked! So as an introduction for the audience we could demonstate live what was going on at our home planet Earth.
After a few warm words of welcome of the German Embassy, astronaut Gerhard Thiele started his wonderful and impressiv talk about his space flight – well adapted to the audience of first students of the German school – and of course in German. Then second concert for the public audience in English with some Arabic translations. It was such a pleasure to listen him, someone who really lived what we all dream about if we look to the stars and do planetarium shows.
The talk was followed by the concert-part with live flute playing, soundtracks of famous orchestras and a show made of the most impressive pictures of Earth I know. The classical music and the pictures are poetically composed as a whole work of art, and in the end the event finally was completed with time for questions to astronaut and musician.
Bringing all this elements into one artistic order I hope to get the audience experience an immersive view of the beauty and preciousness of Earth – poetically, thoughtful, to be enjoyed and to think about it. Feedback was very positive and full of questions, so we hope to come back soon and continue this wonderful cooperation. Thanks to all you guys and ladies who helped make this trip to Alexandria as marvellous and successful as it was! Thanks a lot from the bottom of my heart.;)
The trip was a cooperation of:
- German Embassy in Cairo, Egypt
- Goethe Institute of Alexandria & the German school, Egypt
- Planetarium of Bibliotheca Alexandrina at Alexandria, Egypt
- ESA astronaut Gerhard Thiele, Bonn, Germany
- STARDUST SINFONIE with Roswitha Meyer, Potsdam, Germany