Two Norwegian composers will perform at World Music Days 2019. The 100-year-old festival for international contemporary music begins in Estonia today. “The Norwegian community just flourishes and flourishes,” says composer Jan Martin Smørdal.
/ 02/05/2019 / Kristian DugstadTwo Norwegian composers will perform at World Music Days 2019. The 100-year-old festival for international contemporary music begins in Estonia today. “The Norwegian community just flourishes and flourishes,” says composer Jan Martin Smørdal.
Text: Kristian Dugstad.
Photo above: Jan Martin Smørdal's "All Play" performed in New York 2016. Photographer Steven Pisano.
World Music Days (WMD) is organized by The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is an arena for contemporary music from all over the world. The festival has been held since 1923, and takes place in different cities each year. In 1953 and 1990, WMD was held in Oslo.
The festival begins on Thursday, May 2 and runs until Friday, May 10. Over the next week, works by Norwegian composers Kristine Tjøgersen and Jan Martin Smørdal will be performed in Tallinn, Estonia.
– It's a great venue for meeting new people. I've already directed the ensemble that will perform the work, so when I travel down on Monday it's just to have fun, says Smørdal.
The organization nyMusikk is the Norwegian section of ISCM and nominates Norwegian works for WMD every year. The candidates are then assessed by ISCM's jury. Norway is always represented with one work, but in 2019 two Norwegian composers have been selected.
Composers Smørdal and Tjøgersen know each other well, and play together in the Spellemann-awarded contemporary orchestra Ensemble neoN. Smørdal's composition, All Play, was premiered by Ensemble neoN, with Tjøgersen on clarinet.
– All Play is written around a video recording of guitarist Daniel Meyer Grønvold doing a kind of noise improvisation. It is both loud and poetic, with electric guitar and amplifier. The ensemble both reproduces the sounds from the performance and puts silent video sections into relief. The piece appears in many ways like a guitar concerto, says Smørdal.
The use of video is another thing the two composers have in common. Kristine Tjøgersen's work, Mistérios Do Corpo, which was premiered by the Arditti Quartet, is a tribute to the Brazilian jazz composer Hermeto Pascoal. With the help of a string quartet, she has created new sound for a video recording of Pascoal's original work of the same name. The strings set the music to Pascoal's movements, while he literally plays on his own body.
– I have not used his original sound, but created my own sound world that breaks with our expectations. I have always found expectations of sound very exciting; imagine if you wake up one day, and all the sounds have become completely different! It is a thought experiment I have done since I was little, and the work is a continuation, says Tjøgersen.
She says that she has previously done similar projects with both Glamrock and Bollywood videos.
As a contemporary composer, it can be challenging to reach a large audience. This is perhaps even more the case in Norway than elsewhere in Europe.
– If you hold a concert in Germany, you will be reviewed in one or more newspapers and played on the radio. The general knowledge is different than here at home. But even though the general interest in this type of new music is significantly greater in other countries, I find that it is constantly growing here in Norway, says Tjøgersen.
Smørdal also believes he can see clear differences between the audience in Norway and continental Europe.
– In countries like Germany and France, following artistic trends is seen as something with considerably greater value than in this country, he says.
It may be difficult to speculate on the reasons for this difference. Tjøgersen first wants people to dare to encounter unfamiliar musical expressions.
– I think many people in Norway don't go to concerts with new music because they are afraid of not understanding it. It's a shame, because it is precisely through opening up and challenging yourself that you can experience a new understanding of sound and the world of sound we are surrounded by.
Here you can watch Kristine Tjøgersen's Mistérios do Corpo. The story continues below the video.
Contemporary music is rarely mentioned in the Norwegian media, but that's not because it doesn't exist. If you want to challenge yourself musically, Oslo and Norway have a lot to offer.
– There is an incredible amount happening on the experimental music scene in the capital, and there are so many good and inspiring musicians. Both in jazz, contemporary music and everything in between. Often there are several concerts I want to go to on the same day, and it can be difficult to choose. It is almost a kind of golden age, says Tjøgersen.
Jan Martin Smørdal has the same feeling. There are also clear advantages to living and working with contemporary music in Norway.
– It just blossoms and blossoms. There is an insane breadth of exciting and strange music, and an incredibly fertile environment in Norway today. I think a lot of the reason for this is that it is actually financially possible to carry out projects here in this country – fortunately, and hopefully further.
Here you can watch Jan Martin Smørdal's All Play performed by Ensemble neoN.