This years theme of the festival is “The North” and Rohloff will have 5 works performed at the festival. The conductor and artistic director of the festival, Cathrine Winnes, says about Rohloff:
“His international career involves collaborations with the largest orchestras in the Nordic Countries, as well as brass-players of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Ensemble Modern and a number of opera productions. Schooled in Paris with Grisey and at the IRCAM, it has become his signature to create colorful sounds and suggestive rhythms. He is also a free-thinking artist with the most creative brain. Steingrimur always comes up with something new.
Rohloff is an important figure in inter-Nordic music life. He was born in Iceland, has family ties to Sweden, lives in Denmark, and has a paternal family in Germany, which draws Europe a little closer. The fact that he knows all the countries' languages, culture and music made him an obvious first choice for us this year.”
To mark his residency at the festival, Rohloff is composing a whole new work for the Stockholm Syndrome Ensemble. Rohloff's Die 4 Himmelsrichtungen will also be performed during the festival. The work was composed for the Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen, and has been broadcast by radiostations around the world since it was selected at the International Rostrum of Composers and voted among the top 10 works in 2021.
Rohloff will also be working with one of his most regular collaborators: Rolf Erik-Nystrøm, Norwegian saxophone-magician and specialist for Modern music, for whom Rohloff wrote a saxophone concerto in 2001, will perform two of Rohloff's chamber music works at the festival.
The festival will take place from in Båstad/Sweden the 26th of June to the 1st of July.
Find more information about Båstad Chamber Music Festival here.