Simon Steen-Andersen: grosso
Danish Premiere · Thursday April 23, 19:30
Having spent the last 10 years working primarily with multimedia, found material, and theatrical formats, Simon Steen-Andersen wanted to focus on some of the sounds and musical ideas that often ended up in the background in service of broader concepts or theatrical elements.
The idea of found material or readymades remains the starting point in grosso, but in terms of the musical and physical properties of specific instruments and objects, such as their pitch selection, layout, mechanics, timbre, and resonance. At the centre – almost as a fifth performer in the quartet – stands a Leslie speaker, the legendary double-rotary speaker system associated with the Hammond organ. Not just its signature pulsation and Doppler effect, but also the mechanical sounds of its inner workings are examined and followed as musical motifs.
The piece is performed by Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and the New York ensemble Yarn/Wire, which will be performing in Denmark for the first time.
Mads Emil Dreyer: The Letting Go
World Premiere · Friday April 24, 19:30
The Letting Go is a quiet, almost ritualistic piece written by Mads Emil Dreyerfor the American quartet Yarn/Wire. It consists of five short movements and the total duration is around 15 minutes. The performers play small lyre harps with and without e-bows, a music box, and a selection of table percussion instruments.
The piece is inspired by finding new instruments and setting up dialogues between them. The sonic opportunities that come out of this process and the feedback mechanism between abstract ideas of sound – and the curiosity of actual music-making – are what drive the inspiration.
The title refers to the act of accepting the current situation you find yourself in. In a biblical sense, this might mean surrendering to God’s will. However, the piece is not a religious piece. Nor is it autobiographical in a direct sense, although it was written during a time when Dreyer was thinking quite a lot about how to come to terms with the disjoint between one’s ideals and what reality actually looks like. The piece was commissioned by SPOR festival.
Jeppe Ernst: Cantus (Vol. III)
Friday April 24 + Saturday April 25
Cantus (Volume III) is a nonverbal work of music drama commissioned by Scenatet from the composer Jeppe Ernst and continues their ongoing collaboration, which also includes the work Interludium—performed at festivals such as SPOR, Passage Festivalen, and CPH Stage.
Both Interludium and Cantus are examples of their shared effort to challenge preconceived ideas about what classical music and music drama are and can be. In an exploration of social dynamics and intersubjective relations, ten musicians staged as a choir perform a nonverbal script consisting of eruptions of gestures, touches, and strokes.
As a kind of opera, Cantus investigates the unspeakable aspects of the loneliness woven into human existence. How intimate, how close can we be to another person, the piece seems to ask – while we simultaneously feel radically separated and estranged from one another. Cantus presents radical stylistic gestures that suggest an entirely new approach to opera and performance. Essential to both Scenatet and Ernst is the attempt to preserve the existential and emotional depth that has always lain at the core of an art form such as opera, while daring to challenge its deeply rooted stylistic conventions. Cantus is yet another example of this endeavor.
At SPOR Festival, audiences can experience the work in different spaces and environments – outdoors as well as in an intimate theatre setting.
Performers will be Kalle Hakosalo, Christoffer Breman, Lukasz Szyszko, Joss Smith, Kevin Thomsen, Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir, Marta Soggetti, Clara Stengaard Hansen, Anja Marie Nedremo, and Fei Ni.
Sandra Boss & Katrine Würtz: Bird Choir
Wednesday April 22 - Sunday April 26
Bird Choir is an installation created by visual artist Katrine Würtz and composer Sandra Boss that combines ceramics, rubber hoses, metal couplings, an electric air pump, a wooden box, sensors, and a MIDI-controlled playback system.
The work explores the tension between the natural and the human-made and appears as a choir of alien birds, where whistles, melodies, and tones blend together in an out-of-tune lament. The work consists of twenty ceramic bird whistles filled with water. The birds are connected to an automated air system that performs a preprogrammed composition activated via sensors. When the birds are supplied with air, they are transformed into an apocalyptic bird choir.
The work is inspired by the bird migrations that take place along the Danish coastlines. Because of an increasingly mild climate in Denmark, some bird species will soon become rare and disappear entirely, while new species will arrive from the south as breeding birds. But what kinds of birds will come in the future? What will they sound like, and what will they want to tell us?
The installation is initiated through a ceremonial performance in which all the birds are filled with water. Bird Choir has previously been exhibited at BASALT: Sons et Curiosités in France as well as at Johannes Larsen Museet, Stevns Fyr, and Organ Sound Art Festival.