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Nico and the Navigators IV

GLORY OF GLITCH - On Understanding and Misunderstanding

Concept

A Music-Theatre Investigation in the Age of Infinite Communication

A production by Nico and the Navigators, 2028

Planned as a co-production with the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts.
In cooperation with Radialsystem Berlin.

How we speak. How we transmit. And what can get lost along the way.

Glory of Glitch explores human communication in a world that is constantly transmitting, sharing and responding — and asks what happens when things go wrong: when communication is disrupted, misunderstood or fractured.

The Self in Transmission Mode

At the heart of this music-theatre investigation is the question of how thought and language change under an ever-increasing frequency of transmission, and how acceleration and abbreviated language reduce complex relationships. At the same time, what new possibilities might this open up?

How does language shift from argument to gesture? From facts to opinions? And conversely, what happens when we deliberately slow communication down and once again allow for silence and spaces of listening?

The performance also explores how human relationships change when communication is increasingly shaped by visibility, reach, click counts and public response.

The work observes, shifts, varies and questions different forms of singing, speaking, listening and transmitting. Through performance, things become visible that might otherwise go unnoticed in everyday life: Does our thinking need time, or do we leave it to reflex? What happens to a question when the answer is already waiting? When impulses immediately press outward, what remains within?

Listening in Order to Let Our Thoughts Change?

Listening: When does it actually happen today? And where? What forms of listening exist?

Does it happen in conversation — or only in the pauses between two of our own sentences? In the concert hall, or perhaps in the theatre, when a sound lingers longer than is comfortable? Or in the digital realm, where we scroll and yet claim to be paying attention?

In a present that is constantly transmitting, the ear often seems to remain in a state of readiness: we listen so that we can respond. But do we also listen in order to allow ourselves to be changed? To risk a shift in our own thinking?

Or is listening itself becoming something fleeting — a brief suspension of the self, immediately overtaken again by the impulse to express an opinion?

We want to find out what is needed for listening to become more than simply waiting for our turn to speak, how much silence it requires, and where that silence can be found. Is silence an acoustic category, or an inner attitude?

How do bodies behave within and in relation to silence? And how do they become legible to an audience through music and on stage?

To what extent is listening a fragile situation — a moment in which understanding can unfold openly between people?

In the Sign of Promise, Protest and Decision

The music-theatre project Glory of Glitch emerges within a particular historical constellation: in 2028, the presidential election will take place in the United States; at the same time, it will be sixty years since the events of 1968 and eighty years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Three dates that each mark powerful political and social movements: declaration, departure, election.

This performance, however, does not seek to offer a direct commentary on these events. Rather, the work emerges against the backdrop of this historical constellation. It makes visible how language creates intimacy, organises power and shifts perceptions of reality. Promise, protest and voting appear as recurring social rituals. These anniversaries form coordinates within a present in which political and communicative forces are simultaneously at work.

Visually Striking Music Theatre

The title Glory of Glitch does not describe a technical accident, but the moment when the smooth surface of communication reveals the nervousness beneath it. In a present in which every utterance is expected to immediately invite a response, the error appears as the last remaining form of resistance.

The aim is to create a musical collage of loud and quiet voices, of existing and original compositions, and of texts. The noise of communication is no longer a disruption, but the very order within which communication takes place. We do not want to reproduce this noise, but rather make its sometimes grotesque structure audible; set against it are silence, comic moments and sensual experiences that can be felt as forms of resistance.

Sound and stage become intertwined in a field of tension in which the acoustic and the visual continually question one another. Distorted and processed voices — created with the help of live electronics — themselves become a metaphor: transmission as transformation, disruption as form. The present appears simultaneously as excess and deprivation, stimulus and void.

With Glory of Glitch, we are planning a visually striking, sensual and humorous evening of music theatre that explores the productivity of misunderstanding — both as a deficiency and as a source of creative power. Music, text and stage encounter one another as equals and collectively ask: How do we speak today, and what forms of thinking and perception can be recognised within our ways of communicating?

Liking and Deleting

Amid the flood of messages, personal communication becomes a risk: intimacy, closeness, responsibility and ambiguity cannot simply be liked or deleted. Here, their fragility becomes visible: vulnerability, trust, and the precarious balance between speaking and listening.

Only through the interplay and contradictions of movement, gesture, facial expression, language and the sound of voices does communication unfold its true meaning.

Working Method & Composition

In a working process characteristic of the Navigators, soloists from the fields of singing, music, text, acting and dance come together with a voice acrobat in a collective creative process. Through shared research, pieces

NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS

was founded in 1998 by Nicola Hümpel and Oliver Proske at the Bauhaus Dessau. From 1999 to 2006, they developed their projects at the Sophiensæle in Berlin, where the ensemble quickly gained international attention for its visually striking signature style. Since the opening of Radialsystem in 2006, they have been continuously present there.

With projects inspired by composers such as John Adams, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Philippe Boesmans, Georg Friedrich Händel, Leoš Janáček, György Kurtág, György Sándor Ligeti, Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini, Gioachino Rossini, Fausto Romitelli, Franz Schubert, and Heinrich Schütz, they are now considered one of Europe’s leading music theatre ensembles.

The ensemble has performed worldwide at renowned theatres, opera houses, and festivals. Venues have included Bauhaus Dessau, Berliner Philharmonie, Bregenzer Festspiele, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Dom Musiki in Moscow, Elbphilharmonie, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Händel Festspiele Halle, Oper Halle, Kammerspiele München, Kampnagel Hamburg, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kunstfest Weimar, Opéra-Comique Paris, Opéra de Rouen, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Radialsystem Berlin, Residenztheater München, Münchener Biennale, Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, Staatsoper Hannover, Staatsoper Stuttgart, UIMT Festival in Korea, and the Wiener Festwochen.

With the political farce “Ein Volksbürger”, NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS staged a 2024 production based on research by the Verfassungsblog team led by Maximilian Steinbeis. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Association of Capital Journalists, the Bundespressekonferenz opened its doors for the first time in its history to host an artistic intervention.

Their second production that same year, “The whole Truth about Lies”, focused on the strongest weapon of populists: the lie. Blending pop, classical music, and original arrangements – and employing both old theatrical illusions and new AI technologies – the piece explored self-deception, external control, and white lies. The production was most recently presented in April 2025 at the Shanghai Concert Hall.

In 2011, the ensemble was awarded the George Tabori Prize, and in 2016, Nicola Hümpel received the Konrad Wolf Prize from the Academy of Arts. The recording of the music theatre production “Force & Freedom”— created in collaboration with the Kuss Quartet, EuroArts, and ZDF/Arte — was nominated for the Opus Klassik ward in 2021. During the pandemic, the music video series “Present” garnered over 150,000 views on social media. The recording of “Ein Volksbürger”, was streamed in six languages in the ZDF/Arte media library and watched by more than 200,000 viewers. “Ein Volksbürger”, presented on the shortlist of the 2025 Berliner Theatertreffen, also received a nomination for the Friedrich Luft Prize in the summer of 2025.

Since 2019, Oliver Proske has been developing new innovative stage technologies together with scientists and programmers, focusing on camera tracking, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. These technologies have been regularly tested and further developed in dedicated labs with the ensemble. In cooperation with HTW Berlin, an AI-supported camera tracking system was created that enables flexible, automated close-ups on stage and opens up new artistic modes of real-time expression. Oliver Proske’s AR loop machine was nominated for the AureaAward in 2022.

Beyond her work with the ensemble, Nicola Hümpel regularly shares her approach to guided improvisation at leading drama and music academies, including a long-standing teaching engagement at the Otto Falckenberg Schule in Munich since 2009. She also serves on various juries, such as for the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, advising on talent in music theatre direction. Oliver Proske offers workshops and lectures at a wide range of educational and cultural institutions, focusing on the intersection of stage design and digital technology.

Since 2007, the ensemble has received structural funding from the Berliner Senat and, since 2024, has been institutionally supported.

Website of NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS