Music across boundaries… (Shanghai)

Music across boundaries‌ Interdisciplinary art presented by

For more detail on the cross-boundary works and streaming digital media featured in this publication, please visit www.edition-s.dk Contact: Edition·S – music¬sound¬art Graabroedrestraede 18, DK-1156 Copenhagen K, Denmark Telephone: +45 3313 5445 · Fax: +45 3393 3044 · E-mail: sales@edition-s.dk CEO: Klaus Ib Jørgensen · Personal e-mail: klaus@edition-s.dk · Cell phone: (+45) 2673 5445

Music across boundaries…

Certain composers have a talent for extending the boundaries of their field, others simply jump the fence.

Simon Steen-Andersen and Lars Kynde are two examples of composers well versed in contemporary composition with work lists that include scores for traditional instruments. They have however also created works that we’re not quite sure where to place – something that we view in a positive light! A composer like Line Tjørnhøj works in unusual settings and formats and is almost more interested in the creative process than in the end result. Media arts duo Klejs & Rønsholdt creates interactive opera and other stage formats based on innovative sound and video technology, interaction design and, as in the case of Tjørnhøj, a radical approach to human relations as driving artistic force. Finally, Simon Christensen works in collaborative formats with choreographers and other creators – lately and most prominently with New York filmmaker Bill Morrison with whom he created the hour-long, ambitious art film TRIBUTES – Pulse in 2011.

Simon Steen-Andersen Simon Steen-Andersen´s RunTime Error is a highly original experimental video work created during a residency at HOTELbich in Brussels. Strictly constructed in the form of a two-part invention (with theme, retrogrades, augmentations etc.) it at the same time involves and presents the composer himself as an energetic performer and embraces the entire building in which it was created as a musical instrument.

Simon Steen-Andersen: RunTime Error@HOTELbich, Brussels 2009. Scrreen shot from the video. The work is an adaptable, site-specific composition for camera and sound. It can be embedded in almost any location and is therefore well suited for new music and arts festivals. The production time and circumstances vary from case to case

Simon Steen-Andersen works across almost all kinds of media and expressions; from acoustic music, solo, chamber and orchestra over video art, site-specific installation, and video projection to gallery installation and performance. Steen-Andersen is one of the most versatile and inventive artists in Europe today. He has also written music for the Chinese gu-zheng and symphony orchestra and has enjoyed immense success with this work entitled Ouvertures. The solo part is highly experimental and can be performed by only one Chinese artist, the Shanghai-based Liu Le.

Simon Steen-Andersen’s portrait concert is being performed by the Norwegian ensemble Asamisimasa throughout Europe in 2011. There have been successful appearances at the Huddersfield Festival in the UK, Ultrashcall in Berlin, Ultima in Oslo and several other places. The concert is a continuous multi-media experience with live ensemble music, live video projection, amplification and digital sound design

Lars Kynde Lars Kynde’s experiments are somewhat quieter in their mood but equally fascinating.

He is a composer that delights in creating the instruments on which his compositions are played – in fact these two aspects of music making are not so easily separated in his case and the invention of new instruments and the music created for them melt into surprising new forms.

Lars Kynde also has had great success with his gastronomical concert format, the socalled Tasteful Sounds. This is a combined gourmet dinner and concert experience. Not “dinner with music”, no, dinner as music! The whole meal is developed in close collaboration with a master chef; the tastes of the individual ingredients are carefully chosen and composed together in a complete form; the serving of the dinner itself is choreographed and performed as a musical score. It’s a total experience that Kynde has served to audiences with great success all over Europe. A Chinese version, exploring the magnificent multitude of tastes and perfumes in the various Chinese gastronomical traditions, is also under consideration.

Lars Kynde: Wandelende Tak (Stick Insect).

Photo from a performance at the Tokyo Experimental Festival, February 2011

Tasteful Sounds. Lars Kynde’s synaesthetic performance with food&music.

Photo from a performance in The Hague, August 2011

Line Tjørnhøj Line Tjørnhøj is also composer that doesn’t quite fit the old categories. Her focus is very much on the creative process itself (especially performance aspects) and less on polishing highly finished art objects. Her (non-academic) approach, which involves close collaboration with the performers with which she works, makes for gripping live experiences, often bringing difficult and intense topics to the fore.

A still from Line Tjørnhøj: Split (2011). This work is an opera monologue developed in an open process in collaboration with British cellist Zoë Martlew and exploiting improvisation, notated music, video art and spoken word

Klejs & Rønsholdt Klejs & Rønsholdt is a media arts duo, working with a strong and focused artistic output based on aspects of human relations. In their collaborative projects, they make themselves correspondents of the delicate emotional balance between pain and pleasure and have a vision of moving their audience with a maximized impact – not only through their aesthetic and thematic choice, but also by applying state-of-the-art audiovisual technology as vehicle for their expression. Honeymoon (2007) is an example of such a work.

Still from the opera Honeymoon by Klejs & Rønsholdt – an interactive installation for solo-audience

Klejs & Rønsholdt have several exciting new performances under way, all of which cross the boundaries of the traditional art forms. Most significant are the iPhone application opera Breathless Moment which is being developed in close collaboration with the Royal Danish opera and the hour-long, digitally dressed live-performance Love Racer; an exploration of all aspects of love as the most intimate form of human relation and emotional interdependency. Love Racer is easily adapted into a Chinese version. It makes an excellent festival presentation.

Klejs & Rønsholdt: Love Racer. Photo from the pre-premiere in June 2011 by this hour-long stage performance, incorporating live video projection, live-music, electronic sound design as well as live-presence by the two artists, controlling the show. Love Racer is the most recent and most ambitious of this innovative artist duo’s works to date.

Simon Christensen & Bill Morrison Another recent trend is the modern art film with original music. Not movie scoring, no, an integrated artwork, where image and music is developed as an entity. The most prominent example of this is Simon Christensen & Bill Morrison’s TRIBUTES – Pulse (2011). The hour-long silent art film was premiered with live music performance under prestigious circumstances at the Royal Danish Playhouse in Copenhagen in June 2011.

Screen shot of Simon Christensen & Bill Morrison: TRIBUTES – Pulse (2011)

The project was created in collaboration with The Royal Theatre and was substantially supported by a number of funders and sponsors, the most important of which was the Danish interior design front-runner, furniture manufacturers Montana Group. This company’s involvement in the arts is as renowned as it is profound, and on this occasion Montana constructed an outdoor mirror gallery with a magnificent 7.1 surround sound installation where the audience has been able to enjoy the innovative work throughout the summer of 2011. TRIBUTES – Pulse can be performed both as live screening with the composer’s own trio Kundi Bombo; as gallery installation and as traditional cinema screening. During 2012-13, several performances are scheduled where the live premiere kicks off a following period of gallery installation in art galleries.

Montana Group’s mirror gallery on the waterfront of the port of Copenhagen. Inside, TRIBUTES – Pulse has been showing throughout the summer of 2011.