Festivals

Ambient modes of expression, and listening, were brought to bear on two large-scale works during my long weekend at HCMF, both by Lithuanian composers. The less successful of the two was Hadal Zone by Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, which sought to be an hour-long sonic descent into the most abyssal oceanic depths. …

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Music. There were times during my long weekend at this year’s HCMF when i had to keep reminding myself of this word. Performance art, and works incorporating dramatic and theatrical elements, are not just a staple of new music festivals, they’ve become in many cases tentpole …

As well as the intimacy demonstrated in several concerts at this year’s Sacrum Profanum festival in Kraków, many of the other performances provided opportunities for immersive listening, often within the context of large-scale durations. Two of these, both examples of primary colour, bargain basement minimalism, may well have been striving …

Sacrum Profanum is a festival that has taken place in Kraków, Poland, since 2003. As its name suggests, the original purpose of the festival was to juxtapose sacred and secular music, from the 18th and 19th centuries, but since 2008 it’s been focused on music from the 20th and 21st …

Perhaps the most compelling example of the kind of disorientation that border states can engender came in the concert given by Polish ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, appropriately titled ‘The Borders of Identity’. Here, more than anywhere else during AFEKT 2023, was a concert where none of the five works on the …

Borders are places of confusion, uncertainty and, often, danger, and in this context concerts such as the ones previously discussed at AFEKT 2023 – where most works had strong similarities while one or two were markedly different – raised related questions. Is such similarity attractive and important because it suggests …

Perhaps there’s never been a more appropriate time for a music festival to take as its theme, “Border State”. Borders seem more prominent in world events than ever: we’ve seen them being viciously violated, vigorously reinforced, valiantly defended. Conflicts continue to rage, and the resultant feeling is one of separation …

The experience of Christina Kubisch‘s electromagnetic walk around Oslo’s library had a counterpart in her new vocal work, Strømsanger (“electrical singers”), premièred by Trondheim Voices. The piece originated in the electromagnetic sounds made by Trondheim’s tram system; these became the basis for transcriptions that Kubisch developed further. Lasting around 40 …

Two of my favourite elements of the Ultima festival are its sound walks and installations. To explore Trevor Mathison‘s From Signal to Decay Vol. 6 i walked across town to Atelier Nord, one of Oslo’s most chameleonic spaces. On this occasion its usually bright, open interior had been partitioned, with …

Oslo’s annual contemporary music festival Ultima is currently in something of a transition, between outgoing artistic director Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen and incoming Heloisa Amaral, who took the helm in February this year. On the one hand, what i experienced during my three days there was broadly comparable to previous years, …

The most overwhelming event at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival was a concert at the Arvo Pärt Centre given by soprano Iris Oja, percussionists Vambola Krigul and Lauri Metsvahi, and Tammo Sumera on electronics. In some respects it feels difficult to write about this concert, as the scope, depth …

Despite the quantity of abstract music featured at this year’s Estonian Music Days, it wasn’t surprising – with the theme “soul” looming over the Tallinn part of the festival – that many composers avoided abstraction and sought to create more tangible, referential and / or emotionally-charged music. Indeed, this was …

Surely the most completely abstract music i heard at this year’s Estonian Music Days was Blue Moon Station by Latvian composer Alise Rancāne. The piece involved all six members of the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society (EMA) huddled around a computer keyboard playing a video game projected on …

In previous accounts of my annual pilgrimage to Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, i’ve tended to remark on the festival’s insistence on a theme, usually in regard to how innocuous or irrelevant it seemed in relation to the actual concerts. This year, the Tallinn portion of the festival …

An occupational hazard with writing about music festivals is the inability of readers to be able to experience any of the music for themselves. However, in the case of this year’s Forum Wallis festival, three of the most interesting performances have been uploaded to Javier Hagen and Ulrike Mayer-Spohn‘s YouTube …

Very few performances at Only Connect 2023 failed to impress. Among the exceptions was Caminante by Michael Pisaro, premièred on the opening night by Trondheim Sinfonietta with bassist Michael Francis Duch. Though the work began well, establishing a nicely darkened texture that became almost gritty and dirty, as soon as …

There can’t be many festivals that have as their name a direct command to the audience: Only Connect. This was my third time at Norway’s Only Connect festival, held this year in Trondheim, and each time i’ve attended there’s been a keen emphasis on the importance and necessity, from compositional, …

The most entertaining event at Forum Wallis 2023 was ‘Adventurous Sounds’, a concert billed as being “New Music for and with children” as part of a project aimed at introducing contemporary music to young people, which also extends to in-school activities. One of the most hilarious compositions i’ve ever heard, …

It doesn’t take long to get the measure of a new music festival – aims, outlook, characteristics – but that doesn’t mean it becomes predictable. i’ve found this to be more than usually true of Forum Wallis, which remains one of the most remote festivals i’ve had the pleasure of …

The majority of the concerts at this year’s Dark Music Days were focused on chamber music. The most leftfield of these came courtesy of Trio Isak, in a concert titled ‘Ballet on the Moon’. That title in part derived from the opening piece on the programme, Daníel Bjarnason‘s White Flags, …