There are sequences of events so unusual that their extraordinariness can be embraced solely by sheer reality: in art they would feel of kitsch or flimflam.

The number of coincidences that accompanied the emergence of CLAY SONG certainly exceeds all measures acceptable by film, theatre or literature. Judge for yourselves: an airy-fairy Wroclaw-based musician* discovers inside himself an unstoppable desire for grounding and in order to re-inforce his contact with earth, he takes to pottery. Fascinated by the world of clay, he comes with an idea to combine the newly-born love for the potter's wheel and his lifelong passion for making music. As a result, he bands together 7 exquisite musicians and a pottery master** to produce clay instruments and create a project that would embrace traditional songs and, so to say, clay music. In order to purchase a first-class clay, he goes to Jaromer (Czech Republic) and with 250 kgs of raw material stored in the boot of his car, he sits for dumplings in a local bar. This is where he meets the bar-owner***, a man of great interest for the world and a special bent for correspondences between music and clay, and a riveting trilingual**** conversation follows.

Their talk is continued over vodka in the bar-owner's family house where the musician helps him solve a musical riddle and in return becomes privy the life story of his father, Ladislav Anton (1939-2007), an engineer by profession, a cremator by trade, and by vocation and passion, both of which he discovered at the age of 49, a designer of clay instruments and an ingenious self-taught composer lacking any musical education whatsoever. In the final 20 years of his life Anton composed almost 70 pieces, none of which have ever been brought to daylight. And thus his only son and heir to his ouevre makes a one-in-a-lifetime offer to the Polish musician: to perform the world premiere of his father's penultimate piece, CLAY SONGS. Anton's last will contains but one condition: the performers have to personally produce all the instruments. An additional challenge would be to decipher a unique score whose visual shape has nothing to do with classical notation; it is more of a collage that resembles an original melange of, say, Basquiat, Opałka and Twombly.

The Wrocław performance of Ladislav Anton's CLAY SONGS is the world premiere of the piece and the first introduction of the composer into the universe of music.

* Michał Litwiniec, a musician and sound searcher
** Olga Chojak, an antropologist and singer / Aleksandra Gronowska, an actress and singer / Justyna Jary – an actress and singer/ Joanna Błaszczyk – a singer/ Jacek Tuńczyk Fedorowicz, a musician, Cormorant / Jędrzej Kuziela, a musician of the band Little Instruments / Wiktor Golc, a drum-maker / Leri Papidze, a master of the potter's wheel
*** Ladislav Anton Jr., the owner of a bar in Jaromer, Czech Republic
**** PL, CZ, GB