Selfie in the Dark

What musical associations come to mind when you think of the festival motto »Light«?

It is stimulating to imagine what we could see but could not hear, or what we could hear but could not see. But we can also reflect on how fragile listening is compared to sight, how easily this situation can be destructed at any moment by something we see – and it makes me think of Orpheus: the most extraordinary musician, sound enchanter, had to bring back Eurydice from Hell without never looking at her – and as soon as his gaze fell on her, she disappeared for ever.

What role does contemporary music play in your compositional work?

Contemporary music and earlier repertoire have the same importance to me. They are a source of human knowledge, something to nourish from; not only for my work, but mostly for my experience of living. For me, composing and listening are two sides of the same way of being.

Are you playing any musical instruments?

I play the clarinet! Since childhood I was trained as a classical clarinetist, performing in solo or inside an orchestra, and then practiced a lot experimental improvisation. And today, even if I mainly compose, I still play for improvised performances or for my own sound exploration.

What kind of music fascinates you as a listener, even though you don’t compose it yourself?

Renaissance polyphony, sound sculptures, organum, ambient, Anton Bruckner, American experimentalists, and all kinds of sacred music from every culture

Who or what are your main musical inspirations?

Acoustic situations, in any kind of environment, where the presence of sound seems to be magic.

What three music-related things would you take with you to a desert island?

My clarinet, a recording device to collect the sounds of this place, and an insanely large organ – wouldn’t it be amazing?

What musical associations come to mind when you think of the festival motto »Light«?

Musically, light only makes sence together with its counterpart, darkness. The play of shadow and light is maybe the essence of musical timbre. In the real world, I wish we could have light without all this darkness. My piece Lessons in Darkness was written in response to the times we entered in 2016, with the political shift that took place. As composers and musicians, the intensity and beauty of music is what we can offer, an offering of light, a small fire against the dark.

What role does contemporary music play in your compositional work?

Contemporary music is the world where my music belongs. Its history, masterpieces, dead ends, my colleagues – living and dead – and of course all the musicians that inhabit this world. Even though I live and work in Oslo, outside the mainstream of continental Europe, I belong to a community, both local and global, where contemporary music is all-important.

What inspired you to become a composer?

I initially wanted to become an architect, but eventually music became the most defining force in my life, as a teenager. I think my interest in composition comes from the same source – the need to create a space, even a world – of one’s own, but in sound, not as a physical building.

Are you playing any musical instruments?

I studied the guitar, but these days I mostly play the Fender Rhodes (!) when I play.

What kind of music fascinates you as a listener, even though you don’t compose it yourself?

I listen to so many kinds of music – classical music, of course, folk music, improvised music. Also popular music, when something catches my ear, or soul and r&b from the 70s. I like to listen to contemporary music live in the concert hall, mainly, so I try to go to concerts and festivals whenever I can.

What do you believe music can achieve, and what not?

I believe that music can give us what Marcel Proust said about his character Swann, in the book In search of Lost Time: That music gave his soul a new way of walking.

Who or what are your main musical inspirations?

In my early work it was often literature – novels and poetry, mainly. These days I am more inspired by people – the musicians I write for, their personalities, the sound in their instruments. The same goes for ensembles – each ensemble has its own persona, so to say, its own anatomy of sound. In this sense, Lessons in Darkness is very much inspired by Ensemble Musikfabrik, for whom it is written.

Do you think there's a difference in how people experience your music when they listen with their eyes closed? If so, how does it change?

I think the biggest difference is between listening to a recording and to a live ensemble. In a live performance, the musicians, the actions and energies that play out on stage, inevitably creates a kind of drama – inteded or not. I love this aspect of musical performance. Also, in a live setting, we listen together, as a social, communal activity. Even if we listen with our eyes closed, we are aware that we are part of a collective, however fragile and provisory, of listeners.

What three music-related things would you take with you to a desert island?

I would bring my Fender Rhodes electric piano (Oh no, I would need electricity!), my pencil box with writing equipment and an enourmous stack of blank music paper.

What inspired you to become a composer?

That’s a question I can’t answer myself: from the beginning, listening to the music of other composers has been a real inspiration for writing my own.

Are you playing any musical instruments?

Yes, I play piano

What kind of music fascinates you as a listener, even though you don’t compose it yourself?

All kinds of music fascinate me, as long as they are sincere. I try not to have any preconceived ideas, but the key word is sincerity.

Who or what are your main musical inspirations ?

It can be a person, the context of our life, or the current problems affecting our society. All kinds of things linked to a reality of life.

What three music-related things would you take with you to a desert island?

Pen, paper, my glasses! 

Welche Rolle spielt für dich die zeitgenössische Musik in deiner musikalischen Arbeit?

Seit über 15 Jahren der Schwerpunkt meiner musikalischen Arbeit. Trotzdem stellt sie mich noch immer vor große Rätsel!

Wie bist du zu Singen gekommen?

Auf Umwegen. Ursprünglich war ich Organistin. Für die Kirchenmusik-Aufnahmeprüfung musste man auch singen können. Anfangs schwierig, ging dann aber doch schnell besser als gedacht ...

Gibt es ein Instrument, das du gerne einmal spielen würdest, aber noch nie versucht hast?

Horn! Ich träume nachts immer wieder, dass ich im Orchester sitze und Horn spielen kann. Das ist so schön! Habe es tagsüber aber noch nie versucht, da ich mir die Illusion nicht zerstören will.

Was sind deine musikalischen Inspirationen?

Gestern habe ich in der Menge des vollen Bahnhofs einen Mann gesehen, der seinem kleinen Sohn auf dem Arm ein Lied vorgesungen hat. Der Sohn bog sich vor Freude und konnte nicht genug kriegen. Sowas!

Welche drei Dinge, die irgendetwas mit Musik zu tun haben, würdest du auf eine einsame Insel mitnehmen?

Meine Stimmgabel, mein Plüsch-Nilpferd, das »Guten Abend, gute Nacht« singt, wenn man es am Schwanz zieht und Peter Fox’ Stadtaffe.

What musical associations do you have when you hear the festival motto »Light«?

My first and most important musical association with the festival motto is linked with the feeling of ›enlightenment‹ that can arise from truly engaged listening, when one approaches it with the necessary openness of spirit. It is a feeling that should be fervently invoked in our time – an era that, despite having access to both spiritual and scientific knowledge capable of guiding its evolution, still clings to the archaic belief that conflict can be resolved through war.

What role does contemporary music play for you in your musical work?

As a performer, all composers and their music – regardless of the era they belong to – to which I devote my attention and knowledge, reside on the same level of interest, curiosity, and emotional intensity. Music, as a phenomenon, exists only in the pivotal moment when it is brought to life through sound. In the realm of the arts, no condition is more rooted in the present – more contemporary – than this. What we understand as music becomes fully realized only in the instant of its performance. And when this occurs in a shared time and space, uniting performers and listeners in an unrepeatable moment, the resulting aesthetic experience is among the most profound, even overwhelming, one can live through. It transcends all the specialized categories to which we are perhaps too easily inclined to submit today.

Why did you become a conductor? What reasons and ideas played a role?

I was fortunate to be born into a family that loved music, that taught me how to listen to it, to gradually discover its unheard-of wonders. From this, even before adolescence arose a burning passion for making music, which has never stopped accompanying me since then and defines my very reason for existing, in my early days as an instrumentalist, and later as a composer and conductor.

What music fascinates you when you listen to it that you don’t play yourself?

The kind offered by a summer evening in the open countryside, with no roads nearby; the kind that springs from the unheard-of power of a stormy sea in the middle of winter; the sound that floods us from the starry vault of a night spent in the desert!

What can music do and what can’t it do?

It can illuminate the existence of anyone who knows how to truly listen.
It can do nothing for those who believe one can live well without ever having asked themselves what it could mean, in everyday life, to truly listen.