The 11th Edition of the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival is dedicated to the human theme of exile: 120 million people worldwide are on the run, one and a half percent of the world's population are displaced persons. The Jewish people have always been confronted with exile, emigration, diaspora and galut, the forced life outside the “Promised Land” of Israel. By addressing the subject of Exile, the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival touches on one of the great traumas of humanity. You can emigrate voluntarily, but you cannot go into exile.

However, the need to live or survive in a foreign country, which goes hand in hand with exile, can also unleash creative forces. Béla Bartók, for example, was inspired by the jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman to create his new symphonic style while in exile. And the Viennese opera composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold transformed himself into an Oscar-winning film musician in America.

Under the theme of Exile, Mizmorim presents around thirty artists and ensembles, two world premieres and several Swiss premieres. For the first time, the Festival has also awarded an artist residency: The choice fell on the Basel-based Israeli-Swiss composer and media artist Janiv Oron. He will premiere his electronic interventions to Igor Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat at the opening concert in the Stadtcasino, accompanied by dancer Andrea Tortosa Vidal.

Another highlight is the duo work composed by this year's Composer in Residence Hed Bahack, which will be premiered by Ilya Gringolts and Lawrence Power. The rare opportunity to listen to Schönberg's Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte will be offered by the Gringolts Quartet together with narrator Ruben Drole and pianist Anton Gerzenberg. And for the first time at Mizmorim, Lea Kalisch will be performing in a duo with Guy Mintus on the piano.