The Soundtrack of Luna Luna Forgotten Fantasy

The Soundtrack of Luna Luna Forgotten Fantasy

In the summer of 1987, a fairground opened its gates in Hamburg, Germany—but this wasn’t any old amusement park. André Heller, a curator and artist based in Vienna, had reached out to some of the most respected and revolutionary modern artists in the world and asked them if they’d want to be a part of Luna Luna, the world’s first fine art carnival. A carousel splashed in vibrant colours and covered in Keith Haring’s familiar figures, a Ferris wheel tattooed with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s handwriting and drawings, a glass labyrinth featuring the comic-strip stylings of pop-art icon Roy Lichtenstein, a hall of mirrors designed by Salvador Dalí: Luna Luna’s wild rides were priceless pieces that brought fine art to the masses in a completely new way, which made it all the more heartbreaking when the carnival closed after a brief run—and its pieces were packed away for decades. But now, thanks to Drake’s DreamCrew and a select group of art and music executives, the carnival has been brought back to life as Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy. Many of Luna Luna’s original artworks and installations have been beautifully restored, and several of them feature a musical component, too: Basquiat’s Ferris wheel spins as Miles Davis’ “Tutu” blares, Philip Glass’ original composition for Lichtenstein’s glass labyrinth wafts over the speakers as visitors attempt to navigate its translucent corridors, and the Berlin Philharmonic provides the soundtrack for those walking through David Hockney’s Enchanted Tree pavilion. As visitors walk through the space, they’ll hear soundscapes by composer Daniel Wohl that were written for, and inspired by, Luna Luna. For Wohl—who grew up in Paris, and drew inspiration from the antique carousels he visited in local parks as a child—tapping into the joy of Luna Luna meant providing a fitting soundtrack for visitors that drew inspiration from the flow of the exhibit itself. “Tone Wheel,” “The Tunnel,” and “Carousel” each embrace the characteristics of traditional carnival music—think organs, bells, brass, and buoyant rhythms—without sounding dated (or creepy!). “My idea was that it would be this perpetual harmonic cycle, so it basically just keeps on going,” he says of his three soundscapes. “The Ferris wheel is a cycle; the merry-go-round is a cycle. Everything was very circular. That inspired me as well, this perpetual-motion thing, as did the constantly changing colours.” He also aimed to leave space in his compositions for the occasional blast of a jazz great’s horn to echo in the space. “It's a very high-frequency soundscape in the sense that I'm leaving a lot of room for the Miles Davis to come in,” he says. “I'm trying not to take up too much space, while at the same time filling the space with something that those pieces don't have. It's such a wide range of different types of pieces that there's only so much you can juggle. It kind of has to be this clash of things. I think at a certain point I understood that we're going to be in sensory overload, and that's okay... I'm sure Basquiat wasn't aware of what Keith Haring was going to do, and it all came together and the concept itself was the link. But I had to let go at a certain point of trying to make the link and just take it as inspiration.”

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