Review of September/October 2021

Two months have passed since the first events in the Kulturkirche Paulus - and many wonderful things have taken place in the last few weeks. So it's time for a first look back.

2 major productions, 2 chamber music concerts, 2 conferences, 2 choir concerts, a few dozen choir and theatre rehearsals, 1 wedding, 2 funerals and 2 open-air concerts in front of the church: that's the impressive balance sheet we were able to draw in September and October. However, our greatest success was certainly the garden café experiment ‘POP-UP PAULUS’, which was organised in collaboration with «Unternehmen Mitte» which catered our beautiful forecourt until the end of October.

All in all, we were very lucky with the weather: while the church was still closed during the rainy summer due to initial renovation work, we were able to take full advantage of the golden autumn of the past few weeks. The experiment was a complete success, every seat was taken in the fine weather and the guests were delighted with the new offering. The experiment ended with a big closing party - a continuation from February 2022 is already being planned.

We would like to pick out a few highlights from the events that have taken place in the church: Starting with the ‘1st Basel Choral Night’, which helped us to raise our profile as a future choral centre. The following day, the contemporary ‘Oratorio’ concert of the ‘ZeitRäume’ music festival was impressive, bringing two luminaries of the Swiss cultural landscape, Thomas Kessler and Lukas Bärfuss, to St Paul's Church. Two concerts by the ‘Da Vinci Orchestra’ proved that chamber music also sounds excellent in our church, such as the Chopin piano concerto with Bulgarian pianist Irina Georgieva. The music theatre ‘Le Roi David’ by Arthur Honegger, which the Hochschule für Musik with Raphael Immoos as conductor and Regina Heer as director conjured up in the church, was spectacular. And last but not least, the church façade was once again atmospherically illuminated to mark ‘International Day of Developmental Language Disorders’.

Of course, there has also been a lot of work and discussion in the background. New concepts for seating and lighting are in the pipeline and the long overdue new sound system will also massively upgrade our infrastructure from summer 2022. However, we still lack the funds to be able to tackle all the planned measures – we are grateful for any support!

Many more events are planned until the end of the year. Over 10 organisers, from choirs to chamber music and school orchestras to gospel concerts, will be our guests. More information is available in our programme. We look forward to welcoming you as frequent visitors!