In 2019-2021, KLANG is collaborating with the Korean ATM Festival to portray Danish and Korean composers, artists, and music professionals. The collaboration launches at ATM Festival November 18, where works by composers Li-Ying Wu, James Black, Lars Kynde, Christian Winther Christensen, Simon Løffler, and Regin Petersen will be performed. ATM is a 3 day international festival for new music, which embraces various aspects of the contemporary music scene. The same can be said about the six composers, Edition·S will represent, as they experiment with sound, texture, structure, instruments, and instrumentation thus presenting various corners of contemporary music.
Edition·S represents six composers at ATM-Festival
Li-Ying Wu’s music takes its point of departure in the sound of the music and how sound shifts during the course of the music. The music is therefore built on a highly refined treatment of instruments and sound which is also clearly reflected in her works with electronics. One could say, her music embraces a dialectic on the level of ideas that places both Asian and Western culture in a reciprocal perspective, making her work especially fit for the KLANG-ATM collaboration.
James Black’s music exists in an energetic field of strict structures and expressive sounds. By removing all unnecessary layers in his works he reaches a musical core, which is often made up of a simple idea that is faced with chaotic impulses. He frequently combines traditional and extended playing techniques in order to give each instrument a distinct identity, which unfolds, alone or together with other instruments, in a musical miniature drama with subtle rhythmic hints and clear sonic characteristics.
Lars Kynde is a composer that delights in creating the instruments on which his compositions are played - in fact, these two aspects of music-making are not so easily separated in his case and the invention of new instruments and the music created for them melt into surprising new forms. He often collaborates with artists in other fields to create a broader range of musical experience. He has performed and exhibited extensively abroad, including in Mexico, Australia and most of the European Countries.
Simon Løffler's work Graduale for solo vocal will be performed on December 1st by Alexandra Hallén. Simon Løffler’s works range from extremely intimate set-ups to enigmatic constructions, embracing traditional instruments (transformed in various ways) as well as novel instrumental concepts.
Regin Petersen often experiments with as many different parameters of music as possible, such as instrumentation, sound and performance. His work list includes acoustic 'classical' works, electroacoustic works and installations.
Christian Winther Christensen has his own unmistakable style and manifests himself as a completely contemporary composer pushing the boundaries, while at the same time relating to music history through quotations and intimations that comment on, create ironic distance, turn on it’s head and give new music a completely new dimension.
2019: Year of Culture · #DenmarkKorea60
The collaboration is part of Year Of Culture, an initiative built through cooperation between the Agency for Culture and Palaces, the Danish Embassy in Seoul, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Danish Cultural Institute in Beijing to celebrate the diplomatic relations between South Korea and Denmark through a significant cultural effort in 2019.
The collaboration has a certain meaning to ATM and the contemporary music environment in Seoul. KLANG-Festival interviewed the ATM-Festival director, Sojin Yoon, who elaborates:
“I don't know why, but the Korean new music scene is very closed. We do not have a much open platform to exchange new music. That is why we made ATM festival, a platform for diverse, and deep exchanges. We pursue not only presenting foreign artists' work but also want to know each individual and share their musical life and more. And we believe our platform will change the limited and closed environment of the new music scene in Seoul.”
Click here to read more about the KLANG/ATM-collaboration
Click here for more info about ATM Festival