No less than nine performances representing six of our composers and one DIVA artist-in-residence are on the programme for this year's Athelas New Music Festival, which will kick off next week in Copenhagen.
Athelas New Music Festival is a relatively new festival, which nevertheless in the past three years has grown to become Denmark's largest international festival for contemporary music with a growing audience and a large number of partners. The festival presents concerts that mix music with theatre, dance and visual art and gives music a whole new dimension. The programme offers both world premieres as well as new interpretations of classics of the 20th century. This year, to celebrate the 150th anniversay of the birth of Claude Debussy, the overall theme of the festival will be New French and Danish Music.
The festival runs from Friday May 18 to Friday May 25, and the first Edition·S performance will be on Sunday May 20, where Niels Rønsholdt's Gloomy Room will be premiered as part of the event entitled Man Money Maracas – an avant-garde performance concert.
Monday will be the big Edition·S night with the premiere of Christian Winther Christensen's new piece with the very descriptive title six festival ouvertures [constructed in a poor romantic prelude style] for solo piano and Max/MSP. The work will be performed by pianist Rolf Hind, whom after the concert will participate in an art talk with our very own DIVA Zoë Martlew – artist-in-residence by SNYK and Edition·S. The night is still young enough for one more concert, now with the innovative Trio Zoom, who will play works by a.o. Niels Rønsholdt and Christian Winther Christensen.
Tuesday offers another two Edition·S composers. Rune Glerup's Dust Encapsulated #2 will be performed by Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, and later the same evening a new piece by Nicolai Worsaae, written to a poem by French-German Dadaist Jean Arp, will be premiered at a concert thematising the Lied genre.
On the last day of the festival, Friday May 25, the American JACK Quartet will round off the festival with Jexper Holmen's Intend and Simon Steen-Andersen's new String Quartet #2 on the concert programme.
We are very proud to be so widely represented at this year's festival.
Performances summary:
May 20:
Niels Rønsholdt's Gloomy Room
May 21:
Christian Winther Christensen's six festival ouvertures [constructed in a poor romantic prelude style] for solo piano and Max/MSP
Rolf Hind and Zoë Martlew art talk
Niels Rønsholdt's Hammerfall
Christian Winther Christensen's Being Apu Sakar
May 22:
Rune Glerup's Dust Encapsulated #2
Nicolai Worsaae's Et Frappe
May 25:
Jexper Holmsen's Intend
Simon Steen-Andersen's String Quartet #2
See our performance calendar or the complete festival programme for more details.