ZON from AMBROSIA by Christer Bothén

"The premiere of ZON took place at the same time as the enormous construction was placed over the leaking sarcophagus of reactor 4 at Tjernobyl. Like the bottom of a capsized dream, a capsized Noah’s Ark, it slid forward a few centimeters each day. Not far from there, Andrei Tarkovskij filmed the movie Stalker, about a room in a forbidden zone in which one’s deepest wishes are granted. But who knows their deepest wishes.

This is the external inspiration and framework for this project. The nucleus is a composition that opens up for improvisation and is split up into different zones in the room: the voice is behind and above the listeners. In front of and on the same level as the listeners are the strings, consisting of double bass, piano, and insidepiano.

Above these, the four bass and contrabass clarinets, which are the choir in this drama. The recited texts are cut-ups taken in part from the Swedish translation of A Prayer for Chernobyl, by Svetlana Aleksijevitj and in part from the English subtexts to the film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovskij, along with a Swedish translation of a poem by W. G. Sebald."

– Christer Bothén, 2020.

Christer Bothén born 1941 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Composer, musician and artist. Main instruments: bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, donso n’goni and guimbri. From 1970 onwards, Bothén collaborated with Don Cherry. In 1980 he started Bolon Bata and from 1990 onwards he has been continuing leading his own groups. Among his collaborators are also Mats Gustafsson, Sara Lundén, Goran Kajfeš.