KURT WEILL'S SONGS OF GLASS AND IRON Set for Performance in Toronto

Soprano Reilly Bianchi Nelson and composer-pianist Friedrich Heinrich Kern will present Kurt Weill'S SONGS OF GLASS AND IRON, a music-theatre exploration of displacement and belonging through the lens of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

Kurt Weill'S SONGS OF GLASS AND IRON reimagines the music of Kurt Weill through a contemporary lens. Blending iconic songs with improvised electronic soundscapes and resonant glass textures, the performance moves between cabaret, memory, and modern urban life.

Nelson and Kern guide the audience through a sequence of imagined rooms—intimate spaces where love, displacement, labor, and loss are laid bare. Weill's biting theatricality meets fragile, transparent sound worlds, creating an atmosphere that is at once seductive and unsettling.

Part concert, part music-theatre, SONGS OF GLASS AND IRON asks what remains of human intimacy in a world shaped by markets, migration, and forgetting. The result is a powerful, reflective evening that feels both historically grounded and urgently of our time.

"Weill's outsider perspective—Jewish German composer in exile—speaks powerfully to modern wanderers and people who live between worlds," says Nelson. "We're interested in the possibility that exists in displacement, in translation, in never quite arriving."

The 60-minute performance weaves classical Weill songs (Je ne t'aime pas, Youkali, Nanna's Lied) with contemporary electronics, atmospheric improvisation, and bilingual spoken text (German/English). Kern's sonic palette—piano, electronics, and resonant glass—creates haunting soundscapes that mirror the fragile beauty of the wanderer's journey. 

"These songs were written by a composer in exile," Kern notes. "Glass sounds bring an otherworldly quality—something suspended between presence and absence, belonging and displacement."

The intimate setting of Pamenar reflects the project's artistic philosophy. "Weill belongs in warm cafés and underground salons, not only in the concert hall," Nelson adds. "This is where SONGS OF GLASS AND IRON comes to life."

PROGRAM

Songs by Kurt Weill: 

Je ne t'aime pas

Youkali 

Surabaya Johnny 

Nanna's Lied 

Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?

Ballade vom ertrunkenen Mädchen

Original electronic compositions and improvisations by Friedrich Heinrich Kern