in brieflive

Islands Of Sound Rising From the Sea

Athelas Sinfonietta: »Nordic Sounds«

Veroníque Vaka’s ongoing project to pin some of earth’s most momentous geological processes down in notated music is proving beguiling. The latest fruit was premiered on Saturday at Nordatlantens Brygge. Eyland (»Island«) was inspired by the formation of the island of Surtsey, which appeared 33km of Iceland’s coast on 14 November 1963 following a volcanic eruption.

Much of the Canadian-Icelandic composer’s work charts decline; its musical movement tracing harvested data around ecological destruction and decay. Eyland is about creation, and Vaka seemed to revel in the wonder and grandeur of it. The 15-strong Athelas Sinfonietta sounded with the sweep of a symphony orchestra under Bjarni Frímann and Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson’s solo accordion like the emergent island itself, edging up from the spray with magnificent, slow force.

Some of the other five pieces in this concert focusing on music of the North Atlantic could feel like a ritualistic preparation for Vaka’s – a testament to the composers’ focus more than their lack of weight. Around the clear long lines of Eli Tausen a Láva’s Álvan are distinctive North Atlantic sparkle and harmonic depth; Daníel Bjarnason’s Skelja is a miniature sonic romance between harp and percussion and Friðrik Margrétar-Guðmundsson's Fikta a smudged chorale, played with shamanistic intensity by Ásgeirsson. Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Entropic Arrows focused the mind with its threading of long string tendrils from out of frantic wind and percussion action.

The other premiere was Aya Yoshida’s Song of the Voice – a non-vocal echo of the Faroese song tradition for cello and ensemble in which, at one point, you hear a chain-dance ratcheting round. The work is not without some imagination and effectiveness, but it was made to sound incoherent and unfocused by what surrounded it here.

playlist

16.08.2024

My name is Carolyn Goodwin – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music has always provided me with a clear pathway on which to navigate a meaningful life. It is imbued with a set of noble intentions that have taught me important lessons: the art of giving and receiving, how to grapple with the ever-shifting forces of tension and peace, what it is to trust the people who surround you, and the ability to let go.«

The Irish-born, Denmark-based composer-musician Carolyn Goodwin is a clarinetist and saxophonist, and the founder of Copenhagen Clarinet Choir. Her compositional work is driven by a desire to explore new frontiers in ensemble playing, bringing body and movement to the forefront, and combining the freedom of improvised music with her foundation in classical music. Goodwin's 2022 release with the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir, Organism, on the År & Dag label, has been described as »cranio-sacral therapy for the ear« and »a perfect cross between intelligent and sensory music.« It is these sound and performance parameters that have inspired composers like Marcela Lucatelli, Greta Eacott, and Anders Lauge Meldgaard to compose music for Goodwin’s ensemble.

Goodwin is a member of the trio Coriolis, alongside fellow saxophonists Maria Dybbroe and Nana-Pi Aabo Kim, as well as Jason Dungan’s Blue Lake project. She is also part of the musician collective Barefoot Records.

playlist

12.08.2024

My name is Jay Campbell – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is limitless, and its potential for meaning is infinite. This is neither good nor bad, but simply an acknowledgement that music is one kind of expression of any given culture (with many other inputs, of which I am mostly ignorant). From that perspective, I suppose then that music is just another medium through which I try to understand another human and/or the culture that they exist(ed) in, and more deeply feel the interconnectedness of the world that we live in, that we have inherited, and that we will pass on.«

Currently the only musician ever to receive two Avery Fisher Career Grants – in 2016 as a soloist and in 2019 as a member of the JACK Quartet – cellist Jay Campbell has brought his eclectic artistic interests both as a performer and curator to the New York Philharmonic, Deutsche-Symphonie Orchester, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Ojai Festival, Lucerne Festival and many others. Deeply committed to collaborative music, Jay is a member of the JACK Quartet, as well as the Junction Triowith violinist Stefan Jackiw and composer/pianist Conrad Tao, multidisciplinary artist collective AMOC, and frequently works with composers and performers like Helmut Lachenmann, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Barbara Hannigan, John Zorn, Tyshawn Sorey, and many more from his own generation.

in brieflive

05.07.2024

A World of Contrasts – and a Touch of Smurf Vocals

Roskilde Festival: Slauson Malone 1

Roskilde Festival, Platform, 03.07

Sune Anderberg

The cello is everywhere at this year’s Roskilde Festival. Some use it as just about anything else – hey, now it’s an electric bass, or how about a keyboard drowned in effects – but in American Jasper Marsalis’ Marcela Lucatelli-worthy bomb project Slauson Malone 1, the cello was actually used as, well, a cello.

Marsalis himself handled vocals and electric guitar on the open Platform stage, while Nicholas Wetherell opened the concert with a motor-race assault on his amplified cello, then pivoted into plucked meditations, to which Marsalis contributed overtone playing on guitar. Sensitive jazz guys? Nope – suddenly: synchronized noise sprints, intimacy splintered, and before long Marsalis threw himself into the seated audience with a somersault – and a scream.

Meanwhile, Wetherell played tender vibratos. Because contrasts thrive at Roskilde – and, after all, seem to be driving the world forward these days. And so it was the world itself that came into focus in the music: through violent shifts between 8-bit Smurf vocals, ambient gnawing solo cello, intimate indie layered over a one-second sample of Cher – culminating in a wistful lullaby veiled in digital theremin.

In many ways, it was peak hipster era. But it was also intensely moving – something like following Mahler out on the edge of the abyss as he tried to sketch the whole world into his scores. The only difference: the easel looks a bit different today.

in brieflive

04.07.2024

Shouldn’t Selvhenter be playing the Orange Stage next year?”

RF 2024: Selvhenter

Roskilde Festival, Avalon, 03.07

Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

It is not the first time Selvhenter have shown Roskilde how a saxophone can scream. Even the most avant-garde-ready listeners were left gasping for air. It was hard not to let your own lungs empathise with the long passages and unruly energy that the experimental Copenhagen quartet excelled in, wielding an instrumentarium consisting of two drum kits, synth, trombone, saxophone and assorted extras.

And the more the band – positioned in the centre of the Avalon tent, surrounded by the audience – wove their collective patchwork carpet, the more the individual character of the instruments was erased. Selvhenter could just as well have been playing entirely different instruments. You could see Sonja LaBianca standing there, forcing tones out of a wind instrument, yet it sounded more like a harp from outer space. It was astonishing how her saxophone fanfares resembled distress signals beamed into the cosmos. Meanwhile, the drums drove very grounded rhythms: Steve Reich-like pulses colliding with freer passages.

Selvhenter inflated the tent with full-fat punked and jazzy noise. Without pauses (not even when a snare drum went dead and had to be replaced mid-set) and without water for the crowd. Being so close to the musicians was a plus; on their small central stage they looked like giants in a battle arena. This was new music that was deeply physical. For about an hour we breathed together (and perhaps even sweated?) in sync. And it is profoundly good to do something together at a festival.

Selvhenter on the Orange Stage next year. Come on!

playlist

12.06.2024

My name is Jussi Parikka – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music involves a mix of noise, of existing or fabricated instruments, of alternative worlds that the sounds and voices assemble. Some are gentle, some less so. We shift gears with music, it shifts intensity, we shift with it. I listen when I can.«

Jussi Parikka is a Finnish cultural historian and writer who works at Aarhus University as professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture. After some 15 years in the UK, he continues in Denmark his work on how ecology, digital culture, art and design, and philosophy intersect. He has written on visual culture and history and archaeology of media, including the recent books Operational Images (2023) and Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media (2024) which is co-authored with the Madrid-based artist Abelardo Gil-Fournier. Besides his writing and work as educator, he has been active as a curator including the recent show Climate Engines at Laboral, in Gijon (Spain) that was co-curated with Daphne Dragona as well as his involvement in the curatorial team of Helsinki Biennial 2023.