Photo: Alexander Banck-Petersen
For Danish, click here.
Long, beautiful descriptions mark the review in Seismograf of the staging of the piano piece Archive of Emotions and Experiences, written by Niels Rønsholdt and performed by Liatsou, July 9th. According to Seismograf, the concert was the most fascinating at KLANG-festival 2019. Rønsholdt’s world narrates a present-day story – a story about the climate:
“As a composer, Rønsholdt seldom deviates from staging his music into a certain theme, and in this case the setting was an imagery of Liatsou – who sat on the piano bench behind a transparent plastic sheeting in the concert hall Literaturhaus – was to be in a post-apocalyptic time where the air was so polluted that she could not endure contact with the world outside the sheeting. As a musicological archive of the world, that is lost, she played sonatas of lost things such as birds and justice”.
According to the reviewer, this is a piece that should be recorded as soon as possible and be performed on festivals in the rest of Europe.
The review in Seismograf of KLANG and SPOR investigates the statement of Alex Ahrendtsen’s (politician of cultural affairs of Dansk Folkeparti) critique of the Danish art scene as: “not enough craftsmanship and too much atonal pling plong music …”. Responses to Ahrendtsen’s statement point to the increasing number of young talents of the Danish art scene, who also seek to reach beyond it. This can be said to: “resolve prejudice about the mad pling plong composer who only writes music for his own friends …”. And among these new, young talents is James Black.
Black is praised for the connection he draws to the society. “Black’s pieces are written at eye level with a special community, no doubt about that. A community which is enhanced by the music but which on the other hand can seem cultic to outsiders”. Black is said to peel down his own authority as the piece progresses: “and open them in a way that enables the audience to make their own interpretations”. The review points to the piece ‘POSY’ as: “Crazy. But also momentarily sad. Multidimensional”. The review then turns to Black’s other piece 'Lullabies for Lost Children', whose difficult task resolved in a disruption of a world of East and West: ”… a final movement of electrical guitar, sax, violin, percussion, a golden microphone, and call and response between the audience and the performers in a kind of ironic-non-ironic middle finger of love to the pure imagery of a world divided into East and West. A new world”.
To read the full review in Danish here.