In Berlin, Mongolian traditional music meets medieval European music

At Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, from 13 to 15 November 2026, Dschingis Lab, the eighth instalment in the Musical Belongings concert series, will bring together the musical traditions of multi-ethnic Mongolia in the 13th and 14th centuries with European music from the Middle Ages to the dawn of the Renaissance. European period instruments will enter into dialogue with the Altai yatga, a Mongolian zither, the limbe flute, the ever büree horn and khuur bowed instruments. Another encounter will bring khöömii, the celebrated Mongolian art of overtone singing, face to face with early European vocal techniques, including yodelling. The project thus explores the traces of mutual cultural exchange that may be reconstructed from the movements and encounters associated with the Silk Road.

For this exploration, lautten compagney BERLIN, directed by Wolfgang Katschner, reunites with the Mongolian ensembles Tenger Ayalguu and Tengerton. The programme has been developed with Johanni Curtet, a French ethnomusicologist, composer and singer specialising in Mongolian musical traditions. But Dschingis Lab does more than bring two musical heritages into dialogue: contemporary Mongolian poetry by Gun-Aajav Ayurzana and Luvsandori Ulzituugs, together with video works by artist and curator Bolormaa Algaa, also bring present-day Mongolia, its transformations and environmental concerns into the project.

Since 2023, as part of Musical Belongings, lautten compagney has been exploring at the Humboldt Forum, together with musicians and composers from a range of cultural backgrounds, the possibilities of a transcultural musical practice extending beyond the traditional framework of “world music”. The series places European early music in dialogue with musical traditions from around the world, from India to Latin America and from China to Mongolia, while also questioning the practices of the European classical music world from a postcolonial perspective.

Official website: https://www.humboldtforum.org