He Came to Berlin to Change the World. Then the World Changed Berlin.
The Volksbühne theater’s longtime musical director Sir Henry arrived amid a post-Cold War artistic flowering in the city. The musician bemoans what followed.
“We had a job to explain socialism to the encroaching West in Berlin,” John Henry Nijenhuis said.Credit...Lena Mucha for The New York Times
May 28, 2021, 5:37 a.m. ET
BERLIN — Not long ago, Sir Henry stood on the main stage of the Volksbühne theater in what was once East Berlin and conducted the cosmos.
In “Quarantine, For Solo Human,” Sir Henry, whose given name is John Henry Nijenhuis, did so as part of an interactive musical installation that sent a planet spiraling through a computer-animated universe using motion-sensor technology.