In the weeks leading up to Spellemann on January 30th, we will present the nominees for the "TONO Composer's Award". First up is Anneli Drecker.
/ 15/01/2016 / codexPhoto: Jon Marius Aareskjold
Anneli Drecker is nominated in three categories this year: Pop Soloist, Producer of the Year and not least in the "TONO Composer's Award". She received the nominations for the album "Rocks & Straws". We asked Anneli, a TONO member since 1990, what she thinks about the nomination for the composer's award.
– It is an incredibly great honor for me that “Rocks&Straws” has been nominated for the composer's award because I see myself first and foremost as a composer, secondly as an artist, or vocalist if you will. I would never have sung if it weren't for the urge to compose. Cause and effect, you could say. Ever since I was little and strumming the piano, I always imagined a very string orchestra in my head. Now, over 30 years later, I feel like I have finally gotten to make exactly the record I heard in my head then, she says, but she would also like to brag a little about her group of good helpers:
– I have had good help from Sindre Hotvedt who has arranged the stryk and the rest of the fantastic band, which on the record mainly consists of Eivind Aarset, Rune Arnesen and Ole Vegard Skauge. They have been with me and played for over 15 years, and it was important for me to work in the studio with people I know well and feel confident with.
– Would you like to tell us a little about the music you have composed, and for which you have now been nominated? composer award for?
– When I composed for Arvid Hanssen's poems, I composed everything at the piano. I hadn't done that since before I started in Bel Canto. I made this choice because I wanted a framework around the composition itself. A piano can't lie the way a fat synth sound can. A chord is a chord. And I always had a strong idea that the melody should never overshadow the text, but that the text should always be in focus. I rejected some good melodies because there was simply too much "me" and too little Arvid Hanssen, she says.
– It was also a great help to me that Roy Frode Løvland had rewritten these poems so beautifully in English. It gave me the distance I needed from the well-known northern Norwegian ballad genre that is associated with Hanssen and therefore allowed me to think completely new things in terms of style and genre. I also discovered that the English edition made the poems more universal and not so local. Not least, I discovered that the poems, many of which are from the 70s, had current themes that touch me. “That oar wasn't meant for rowing that only gives a landing ashore where no one lives” from the song Alone, which today can be about the total loneliness refugees must feel when they land somewhere where no one is waiting for them…”
… Or in the song “Fisherman's Blues”. About the fisherman and his work, a now almost extinct coastal culture that is just fading more and more before our eyes with each passing day, because of greedy capitalists and cynical politicians … without us being able to do anything about it! We would love to save the elephants in Africa, but what about our own local fishing boats, our origins? I live in Tromsø and feel a very strong closeness to the themes in Arvid Hanssen's poems. Man in nature and man and nature. So when I composed, it was important to me that there were contrasts in the arrangements, just as there are contrasts up here in the north: in the seasons, in nature. From the very close and simple to the magnificent and panoramic.
– These others you are competing with are strong. Any thoughts on them?
– It's really cool that Morten Qvenild is nominated for the composer award too. Like me, he is an art fellow and both of our nominated albums are part of our art fellow projects, i.e. part of our research. If we look outside the composer category, Stian Andersen's Röyskopp video "Skulls" is beyond good, and it's incredibly cool that a still photographer managed the transition to live images so phenomenally well! I really wish him that award! The video has received enormous attention abroad.
And it's full of famous people in all categories, and there's so much good that has come out this year: Susanne Sundfør, Ane Brun, Band of Gold, Fay Wildhagen, Jaga Jazzist etc. And it's also really fun that Sondre Justad has received so many nominations. Cheers to Nord Norge, I just have to say it, she laughs. – But I also miss Eivind Aarset's release IE on the podium in Åpen Klasse. There's rarely someone who should be nominated who isn't.
"Here are this year's nominees for Spellemann" (tono.no) for a full overview of all nominees in all categories.