The Dresden Music Festival came to a close on Sunday with a spectacular show. The musical-literary program “New Worlds,” featuring U.S. actor Bill Murray and a trio led by Dresden cellist and festival director Jan Vogler, was deliberately billed not as a concert but as a show.
Audience gets one encore after another
Murray recited texts by Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Billy Collins, and James Fenimore Cooper, and also performed as a singer, for example with songs from Leonard Bernstein’s musical “West Side Story.” The audience in the hall went wild and demanded one encore after another. With violinist Mira Wang and pianist Vanessa Perez, two outstanding musicians were also on stage.
In addition to the Prélude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, the program featured music by Maurice Ravel, Astor Piazzolla, George Gershwin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Franz Schubert, and Manuel de Falla. As a “surprise” not listed in the program, Murray sang the Tom Waits classic “The Piano Has Been Drinking.” Murray also took the microphone for Van Morrison’s “When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God.” The concert ended with a standing ovation from the audience.
