MCO/and indeed keeping in shape

I was in the beginning of May asked to play in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in a project in Germany. I was really glad to be asked and thinking about my earlier posting keeping in shape;  I am indeed in a good shape after playing with this wonderful orchestra for 2.5 weeks. The orchestra play very well together with good intonation and great energy. Although I work with more experimental music and art I really need the “normal” playing and music making in order to develop as a musician. From this music and tradition all the new possibilities has emerged. I also used my time lately to finish the written project in pedagogics about “Contemporary music in string teaching” at the Academy of Music, a project I do together with collogue fellow Sigurd Imsen.

Live broadcast on ARTE of Weber’s Freischütz on 1 June 2009 and of the concert on 31 May 2009 featuring Schumann’s Symphony no.3 and selected works of Mozart.

After giving the MCO Residence in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) a festive start with a concert performance of Weber’s opera Der Freischütz under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock, orchestra, conductor and soloists move on to the renowned resort city of Baden-Baden. The production, staged by Robert Wilson, will be broadcast live from Baden-Baden by ARTE and will also be available on www.arte.tv as a live-stream.
The MCO’s concert with Thomas Hengelbrock will also be broadcast live. The programme includes Schumann’s lively Third Symphony in E-flat major as well as Mozart’s Symphony no.25 in g minor and selected arias of Mozart. Soloists will be soprano Véronique Gens and baritone Peter Mattei.

Der Freischütz: 1 June 2009, 7 pm

MCO Concert: 31 May 2009, 7 pm

audiovisual satelite

On May 7th Mattias Arvasstson and I had our performance at the Museum of contemporary Art in Oslo. We tried out the idea of using the movement, colours and pulsation of the video as a musical score, using Mattias,s object for projection. That meant that we did not have to have any walls for projection and did not have to interfere into the exhibition as such. Originally it had been the meaning that the concert installation should take place in the big exhibition room. It is very light in Norway during the summertime and i realised that during one of the visits to the museum that this room was much too light for projection. We ended up to get a beautiful empty room at the second floor. Many thanks to Anna Lindblad at the the Museum of Contemporary Art who helped us to get this space and to arrange the concert.

On photo: The original space for the performance.

For the first time I played a concert without any soundperson there. I realised that the acoustics changed  a bit when the audience came, and I think I will bring a stage monitor for the next performance. I used 6 genelecs, one on the object and the one with pure violinsound behind  me, and the rest in in each corner. Again I used the a granulation process using 3 buffers with different lengths, pitching and grainlength. Thanks to Edvin Østvik for the beautiful and user-friendly maxpatch !We had to carry all the equipment ourself which was really hard!

After rigging up we got visitors from the Academy of music, the electroacoustic composition class came to see what we where doing.

On photo: The performance space

Having 9 footpedals I got a very broad setup. I am looking forward to experiment more with some smaller controllers and setup.

I will also for the next performance have visual monitor in order to see the visuals better.

Satelite on the top of the opera

It has been a very busy but interesting process working and performing the two Satellite concerts. The first one taking place at the Roof of the Norwegian opera and Ballet April 28 and the second one in a beautiful big space at the Museum of contemporary Art. Being in charge of the planning of the operaroof I had to go into the topic of projection, choice of lenses, amount of ansilumens when the goal is to have the projection as clear and big as possible. The size of the wall we wanted to project on was 14.5x 32 meters, and sunset was around 9 pm. I decided to go for 10 pm and hoped for good weather. I also had a “bad weather plan” hiring party -tents, but fortunately I did not have to go for that. On the actual day it was some scary black cloud, but it never rained! A bit cold though about 10 degrees.

To rig up PA and projectors took more planning than I would have thought. It felt like having a concert on the top of a mountain except that we had access to electricity.  I got very good support and help from Knut Vik and lot of people from the Academy of Music helped to rig down after the concert. I had decided because of the wind not to use music but have it on a PDF on the computer. Ivar Frouberg had made me a beautiful little maxpatch that could turn pages. I worked very well and secure. I was practising with the patch for about a week, in order to be able to use the foot for turning the pages (Yamaha midi FC) as well as using other pedals (fuzz, octaver, delay) For Elektra I also had to follow the maxpatch (triggers and timing) on another computer. All this technical issues worked out very well, although I from time to time during Elektra was very busy!

To get the projection as big as we got it worked out well, surrounded by the city on the big marmoreal roof. The volcano in Elektra became huge, and I became very small, which I see as an interesting contrast. The fact that the size of the projection was so big made a better communication between the music and the video. At the most I think it was around 400 people at the roof, something I founded very good.

Thanks to Ellen Roed who took some photos!

I got a lot of press on the project, also at Østlandsendingen (TV)
For links (in Norwegian only see links)

http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/distrikt/ostlandssendingen/verdi/98274
http://universitas.no/s0k/et%20samtidseventyr/
http://www.ballade.no/nmi.nsf/doc/art2009042413190695170061

On photo: The city of Oslo seen from the top of the opera photo Lena Nielsen Universitas

satelite on the roof of the operahouse April 28

Satelite on  operaroof

Victoria Johnson, electric violin
Elektra and MultiMORF II by Knut Vaage
Ellen Roed og HC Gilje, video, Thorolf Thuestad, sound design
Operaroof, Tuesday April 28 at 22
With support from Norsk kulturråd and pilot founding from NMH
Entrance free

Satellite is a contemporary art project with the electric violin, interactive electronics and real-time video that explores space, communication, and improvisation. By creating a performative dialogue between the composed music, improvisation on electric violin and improvised video work this project seeks to find a common artistic language between sound and image in a performative situation. The project challenges the different types of rooms for these artistic expressions, outside of the traditional stage or concert hall. The project is in 3 parts; performances of Elektra and MultiMORF II on the roof of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet 28.4 in 2009, a concert at Samtidsmuseet in May 2009. The project will in November 2009 be transformed into an installation at Lydgalleriet in Bergen.

installation and concert April 2

April  2 I went to see the opening of Kirsten Reese Angelic Streamers in Paulus Church in Oslo. Home made cassettes with music meaningful to the contributors from any genre were mixed and send out in small sequences through small loudspeakers in the church.

I also had the chance to hear a concert at with Wu Fei (gu Zheng og voc)
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax). A very inspiring evening and my first meeting with the Chinese harpinstrument gu Zheng.

The harpist used a very virtuous technique using a bottleneck on many fingers, and the instrument was resonant and beautiful. As always it was great to hear Rolf Erik and his improvisations.

On photo: Wu Fei (gu Zheng og voc)
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax)

keeping in shape

Beeing used to practice a lot all my life it is a real challenge to keep in shape on the violin.

There is so much practical going on in my project right now.

I am trying to practice some technique and scales every day, but I do not have enough time. On March 29 I played Bach violinconcerto in Tonsen Church together with the organplayer Yngve Breievne.
I will have to keep up my technique daily in order to be able to express what I want on the instrument. I founded a cool video from colleague prof Terje Moe Hansen from the Academy and his use of extended techniques in his improvisations.

concert at Landmark March 14

Concert at Landmark March 14

ftm workshop and concert

Rehersal with Diemo Schwarz at BEK

March 9-13 I participated on a FTM workshop at Bek in Bergen led by Diemo Schwarz from Ircam. A very challenging but interesting workshop. FTM is an extension for Max/MSP and PureData providing a small and simple real-time object system and a set of optimized services. (http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/Main_Page) Towards the end of the workshop he also went through Gabor and CaraRT.  In Gabor I founded some really interested pre-programmed patches I want to try out. Friday 13.3 I played a concert at Landmark together with Diemo Schwarz. He first had a soloimprovisastion followed by our improvisation and then the soundartist James Webb performed. During the stay I also worked with Thomas Dahl creating some new soundscapes for our piece. He used some of his favourite filters and features in Ableton. I think we have some really interesting material now; I just have find time to work and develop sounds and practice with the midipedal.  I want the pedal for to feel like an extension of my instrument so every move become smooth and sensitive.
I also worked with videoartist Mattias with our realtimeimprovisation concept. He is now using a “box” to project on. It feels much more like a symbiotic connection between audio and visual when we both relate to the visual material on the box.
On March I rehearsed with Diemo Schwarz at Bek. It was really interesting. I hope I can put some sound out in a while.

Mattias Arvastsson projecting on an object. We will use this for our next gig.

Diemo Schwarz and me at concert at Landmark

concert, finally

February 26 we premièred Victoria Counting II together with pieces by Frounberg and Kruglevicius. The whole performance called counting, memory and interrogation was full in the first performance. I think it worked well with the performance as a whole and that the diversity of the pieces gave variation for the audience. I have got lots of positive feedback, but also new thoughts about future work for the piece. I really like to be in a “closed” room surrounded by audience, 8 speakers and the videoscreens. We separated my sound so the 4 genelec,s in the inner circle had the non processed violin sound, and the four big speakers in the corners of the room had the processed sound. A good idea from Ivar Frounberg.

On photo: Mattias Arvastsson and Victoria Johnson playing at Vinterlyd

The fact that Henrik Hellstenius and I have worked with the human, musical, staging and visual questions for many years, has changed my way of looking at musical pieces. I see them as a long lasting projects with potential of great development rather than a piece. I used a whole day reading texts by Gurdjieff trying to understand the end of the piece. What does happen after you have been counting from 1-50 and back 7 times observing yourself and your thoughts? Is it possible to be more present in the daily life with all your roles and doings? How do you cope as an artist with all your stress and obligations? The piece creates an arena for me to invstigate this issues in an artistic way and hopefully will tha audience also feel some familiarity in these issues.

more Vinterlyd

On photo: Henrik Hellstenius, Ivar Frounberg and Edvin Østvik discussing the sound set-up.

The weekend og February 7-8 we used the Levinhall at the Academy to work on Victoria Counting II. It was the first possiblility to see how the video workes together with the music and live prosessed sound. We were working on different orders of the music and visuals as well as the narrative content og the video together with the music. How loud should the levels of the  soundscapes be? On Friday 13.2 we worked for the first time with director Jon Tombre. It was very interesting and challenging to see the piece from a dramatic point of view.