Artists: Daniel Hope, Christopher Hope, Jonathan Moore, Uri Caine, Ralph Alessi and others...

There is music, there is theatre, and then there is something completely different. "Music to die for!" took an extraordinary look at the connection between music and death.

Daniel Hope and the Feldkirch Festival under Thomas Hengelbrock commissioned the writer Christopher Hope, to write a play around this idea. Daniel Hope then enlisted the British stage director Jonathan Moore ("GREEK" and "SEX, CHIPS, ROCK AND ROLL") to produce and direct, which initially featured two inspired actors from Berlin's Gorki Theatre.

The production was offered in both English and German versions. For the première performance, Daniel Hope was joined by a team of star-studded musicians, including jazz greats such as Uri Caine and Ralph Alessi. Uri Caine performed some of his award-winning Mahler arrangements. Daniel Hope also commissioned a new arrangement of Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder " by Andreas Tarkmann for baritone and ensemble, and Gaurav Mazumdar performed heavenly Ragas from India.

"Music to die for!" was a bold, dark and devastatingly satirical look at life after death, and how music is inexorably connected. Or to quote the author Christopher Hope:

This is a piece of musical theatre , a comedy / drama collaboration for musicians and actors, it is a debate between high and low, earth and sky, heaven and hell, the way the world used to be, and the way it is now. It is a musical reflection on the nature of eschatology, a musical meditation on the Four Last Things: death and judgment, heaven and hell – an age-old debate brought sharply up to the present. Musically it ranges from the music of Gustav Mahler, via Uri Caine to Gaurav Mazumdar, and spiritually it explores an argument as least as old as human-kind. Is our species worth saving and if God could do so, would he bother? And if he did take the trouble, would we be worth it?