After their first successful collaboration in Florence in 2012 with the project called “Technobohemians” Ksenia Kogan and John Malkovich decided to create a new non-excising before crossover. “Report on the Blind” is the world premiere of a newly interpreted version featuring a literary twist.

Piano Concerto by late 20th century Russian composer Alfred Schnittke performed by piano soloist Ksenia Kogan and string orchestra is combined with the text from the chapter Report on the Blind of the contemporary Argentinian writer Ernesto Sabato’s  novel On Heroes and Tombs narrated by John Malkovich.

Ernesto Sabato is bringing a realistic allegory of all times tragedy through the paranoiac idea of the character Fernando Vidal that THE BLIND RULE THE WORLD. The character expresses his reflections on God’s existence and the power of the Blind Sect. The music responds to those ideas by avant-garde interpretation of Schnittke’s Concerto full of dissonant harmonies and sharp expressions. As Alfred Schnittke was living at the most severe times of KGB control in his country, the general paranoiac idea of Sabato’s novel “the blind rule the world” is strongly bonded between music and text through a fear of the unknown, inescapable fear of the prosecution and control. "Ksenia and I had gone through many ideas, and she particularly liked the Schnittke piano concerto, which struck me in many ways as paranoiac and which I like very much, and made me think of the Sabato book On Heroes and Tombs," Malkovich said during a preparation to a World premiere of this project in Seoul, South Korea. Ksenia Kogan and John Malkovich worked carefully through the musical and literary text selecting word by word those moments of collaboration between piano, voice and the orchestra. “Listening to Schnittke Concerto I felt this music has a rare potential for a dialogue between piano and narrating voice and it made me think that its expression would perfectly suit the Malkovich style,” Kogan said. The text complements the music and produces a dialogue where the voice is a part of the music; it plays a role of a musical instrument rather than a narration.