NO MAN'S LAND to Premiere at Auckland Arts Festival 2016

Auckland Arts Festival 2016 is proud to present the World Premiere Season of John Psathas' extraordinary new musical collaboration, No Man's Land, a once-in-a-lifetime event in Auckland next March.

John Psathas is no stranger to large-scale works but this "love letter to peace" is his most ambitious project yet.

Featuring 150 musicians from more than 20 countries, including Serj Tankian ( Lebanon/Armenia/USA), Meeta Pandit (India), UNESCO Artist for Peace Márta Sebestyén (Hungary), the Refugees of Rap (Syria) and the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble (Netherlands), No Man's Land brings together the descendants of opposing forces in the First World War and reunites them in friendship and musical exchange on the sites where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought a century ago.

Filmed by director Jasmine Millet and cinematographer Mathew Knight, the virtuoso battlefield performances will be seen and heard in tandem with seven international musicians performing live on the Auckland Town Hall stage.

Together these virtual and live performers create an international orchestra performing music that leaps musical genres as it does borders, from folk to jazz to rock and classical; extraordinary considering such collaborations would have been unthinkable by the warring nations one hundred years ago.

"But I had in front of me the dead man, the dead French soldier, and how I would have liked him to have raised his hand, I would have shaken his hand and we would have been the best of friends" - German soldier.