Review of November/December 2021

Photo courtesy of Lucia Hunziker

The end of the year at Kulturkirche Paulus was a busy one - unfortunately once again due to the corona virus. Despite a few cancellations, many choir concerts nevertheless set new accents in our programme profile.

To anticipate: Yes, Corona has unfortunately also led to unwanted changes in our agenda: A handful of organisers had to cancel their long-awaited end-of-year concerts with us at short notice. But on the other hand, there were still a dozen events that were able to take place despite all the circumstances and to the delight of numerous and loyal concertgoers!

At the beginning of November, for example, Viviana de Farias, together with the Da Vinci Orchestra and her band, brought Brazilian bossa nova magic to the church - the hits by Antônio Carlos Jobim were a treat for the ears and the colourful lighting of the interior was a feast for the eyes! With the Advent season approaching, a series of long-prepared choral concerts finally found their way into the Kulturkirche: starting with the ‘Rheinstimmen’ and the ‘Voce’ choir, who performed English choral and organ music, the programme moved on to the Trinational Youth Choir Academy CHŒUR3 under the direction of Prof. Frank Markowitsch, where young people from Germany, France and Switzerland presented excellent choral music by Brahms, Poulenc and Hindemith.

We celebrated a première with Juventus Musica Basel - do we also have room for a romantic (i.e. large) orchestra? The answer is yes! The orchestra celebrated its 10th anniversary with excerpts from Mozart's Requiem, Mendelssohn's oratorios and Dvořák's 9th Symphony. Finally, the vocal ensemble ‘pourChœur’ delivered the perfect programme for the Advent season: under the title ‘MYSTERIUM’, they musically explored the mysteries of the Christmas season, supported by Christopher Jepson as solo cellist and framed by our traditional Christmas decorations and a Christmas tree over 9 metres high.

Last but not least, we had the honour of welcoming an FCB as our guest twice: Firstly, FC Basel with a touching funeral service for its long-serving media director Josef Zindel - and secondly, FC Bachletten 2020, which held its inaugural meeting in our church.

What's next for the new year? First of all, there will be a veritable ‘January blues’, only a few events are currently planned and we hope that things will get better in the spring with warmer temperatures and the hopefully soon ending pandemic. Nevertheless, there is one internal highlight coming up: Our co-working space in the former community centre on Schweizergasse will be ready for occupancy at the end of the month! We are still looking for interested co-renters, all further information can be found below:

CoWorking Schweizergasse_Flyer.pdf

Download PDF • 2.69MB

.