VoxLAB Spring FEST 2019
VoxLAB förste musikteaterfestival VårFEST was organized in spring 2019.
En 3 dagers festival med fokus på nye vokalrepertoar og nytt musikkteater som tokk plass på Melahuset, Vega Stage and Theater of Cruelty.
The festival's participants: Tone Åse, Sten Sandell, Kristin Norderval, Gro Siri Ognøy Johansen, Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer, Øystein Elle, Jo David Meyer Lysne, Sidiki Camara, Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir
VoxLAB also presented Pamela Z as a guest artist. Pamela Z is an internationally recognized composer, singer and pioneer in digital looping techniques . Her theater and music works combine bel canto with experimental vocal techniques, objects, text and sampled concrete sounds. Pamela Z has never before been presented in Norway.
Pamela Z åpnet festivalen med et verksted for utøvere og komponister, og avsluttet festivalen med en_cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_solo show for voice, interactive audio and video.
The festival's program included premieres of two new music-dramatic works, as well as an evening with performing and improvising composers.
Program:
9. april: _cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Workshop with Pamela Z – Melahuset - at 13:00 - 16:00
9. april: _cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ RAKEL 2018 - Theater of Cruelty - at 20:00 RAKEL
10. april: _cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Voices in Between - The Melahuset - at 20:00
11. april: _cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ HEXE - Vega scene, at 19:00
11. april: _cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Pamela Z Solo Show – Vega stage, at 20:30
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09.04 TUESDAY
Workshop with
Pamela Z
Tickets can be ordered at: ticketco.no
Price:
Ordinary: NOK 350
Student\Honours: NOK 275
Payment by card, cash or tip
Maximum 25 participants.
Pamela Z will demonstrate her solo performance setup, discuss how everything works together, and participants will be able to try out her technology. She will engage the participants in vocal work that explores sound, in parallel with working vocally in a way that simulates the expression with technology.
The multimedia artist Pamela Z is coming to Norway for the first time and VoxLAB is proud to be able to present her in Oslo at the festival VoxLAB VårFEST with both a workshop, Solo Show at Vega Stage and a trio concert with Sten Sandell and Tone Åse at Melahuset.
In addition, Pamela Z's installation Sound Gestures will be shown at TEKS - Trondheim Elektroniskene Kunstsenter (teks.no)'s viewing room at Bakklandet ahead of VårFEST. Pamela Z will also be a speaker at the lecture series WoNoMute, (Women Nordic Music Technology - www.onomute.no) at the Department of Music, NTNU in Trondheim, on Monday 8 April. In Oslo, she gives lectures at both the Norwegian Academy of Music and the University of Oslo.
About instructor:
Pamela Z (SF/NY, USA) is an internationally recognized performer, composer and pioneer in digital looping techniques. As a multimedia artist, she has been - and still is - an important inspiration for many in the vocal, experimental and music technology environment. Pamela Z primarily works with voice, live electronics, sampled sound and video. She processes the voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers.
Her solo work combines experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, objects, text and sampled concrete sounds. She works with digital software and custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical movements. Her performances vary in scale from small concerts in galleries to large multimedia works in theaters and concert halls.
In addition to her own performances, she has created a number of intermedial works, including multi-channel sound and video installations.
For more information about Pamela and her projects:
RACHEL 2018
Kristin Norderval/ Gro Siri Ognøy Johansen
MODE - 20 years Jubilee
Tickets can be ordered at:
Price:
Ordinary: 100 NOK
Student\Honours: NOK 50
Payment by card, cash or tip.
Cast:
Kristin Norderval: Composer, Song,
Electronic Sound
Gro Siri Ognøy Johansen: Song,
Medieval Instruments, Improvisation
Steffi Lund: Scenic Guidance
MODE: Recording and Technical Guidance
RAKEL2018 is a work commissioned by Modus center for medieval music on the occasion of their 20th anniversary. Through voice, medieval instruments and electronic sound, composers Kristin Norderval and Gro Siri Ognøy Johansen explore mechanisms around abuse, power and courage.
The story of the child murder in Bethlehem and peace prize winner Nadia Murad's story of genocide and abuse provide a basis for researching physical and psychological reactions when abuse of power is confronted. NRK has said of Murad: "She did not accept the social codes that dictate that women should remain silent and be ashamed of the abuse they have been subjected to. She has shown extraordinary courage by telling about her own suffering and speaking up for the victims." The same could have been said about the biblical Rachel as she is portrayed in the liturgical drama "Ad infectionem puerorum", the infanticide in Bethlehem, from the 12th century.
RAKEL2018 has been developed through an interaction-based working method, which leads to an organic score tailored to the two singers. For RAKEL2018 , Notam has created a machine for light and shadow play. The performance has been developed and co-produced in a collaboration between MODUS and VoxLAB with support from the Norwegian Composers' Fund, the Norwegian Cultural Council and the Fund for Performing Artists.
Read more about RAKEL 2018 and MODUS here
About the athletes:
Gro Siri Ognøy Johansen (Oslo, Norway) has a Cand.Mag in performing singing and pedagogy from the Rogaland Music Conservatory and has a diploma in Gregorian chant and conducting at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris. She has participated in several international CD recordings under the direction of Katarina Livjanich in the ensemble Dialogos and Musica Reservata. After completing her studies in Paris, she started the Modus center for medieval music in Gamle Oslo, where she has extensive experience as day-to-day and artistic director of Oslo medieval music days and Eufemiadagene.
With her Modus ensemble, she has specialized in performing various masters in the Middle Ages. Through co-productions with, among others, the UIO Historical Museum, the Modus ensemble has created visual performances with medieval song and improvisation for children and young people. After becoming a certified Gestalt therapist at NGI in 2015, she has developed her own method in which she uses Gestalt singing as an artistic tool for composition and improvisation with a focus on voice and emotions.
Kristin Norderval (NY/Norway) is a performer, singer and composer. In Kristin's compositional landscape, she mixes classical singing and acoustic instrumentation with electronic elements to a completely distinctive, mood-creating soundscape. Kristin is keen to explore the nuances of the human voice and bring out a message as well as creating lively and organic expression.
Norderval's compositions can be found on CDs released by BIS, Everglade, Deep Listening, Koch International and Losen Records. She has also recorded works by other composers for Aurora, CRI, Deep Listening, Eurydice, Ravello, New World Records, and Nonesuch. In 2012 she released the album "Aural Histories (post ambient-arias for voice and electronics)" - a collection of her works for voice and laptop. "Aural Histories" ended up on The New Yorker reviewer Alex Ross' list of the ten best classical releases of 2012.
Kristin Norderval's opera "The Trials of Patricia Isasa" premiered in Montreal, Canada in May 2016 at the Monument National Theater. It garnered praise from critics and received Quebec's OPUS award in two categories: best production in Montreal in 2016 and best new music.
Bjorn Ross (SE) is an artist, producer, curator and organiser, born 1957 in Stockholm, living and working in Copenhagen since 1982. He is educated at The Royal Danish Art Academy and has exhibited regularly in the Nordic countries, Europe and North America since 1982. He also works as an organizer and producer of many events and festivals, ranging from sound art to early music, such as Overga den Sound Art Festival (2004) and Copenhagen Renaissance Music Festival (annually since 2006). In 2008 he made the videographic setting for the dance performance Closer, in collaboration with composer Simon Christensen and the dance company Åben Dans. Together with Magnus Tessing Schneider & Nordic Network for Early Opera he has done several baroque opera productions in Copenhagen, such as of Monteverdi's LDrfeo (2007), Monteverdi's Poppea (2011) and Cavalli's Gli Amore di Apollo et di Dafne (2014); and together with Deda Cristina Colonna he staged Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo (2010). Bjiirn is Artistic Director of KoncertKirken in Copenhagen and furthermore engaged as administrator and board member of several early music networks such as Nordic Network for Early Opera, NORDEM - Nordic Federation For Early Music, and REMA - European Early Music Network.
Steffi Lund (NO) is a creative and performing dance artist, educated at the School for New Dance Development at the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam. Since 1989, she has worked in the independent performing arts field, based in Oslo. Website: www.steffilu.no
Shwan Dier Qaradaki (NO) came to Norway as a political refugee in 1999, and took a master's degree at the University of the Arts in Oslo in 2009. Shwan's art problematizes identities in a multi-ethnic and multicultural world. He is a mixed-media artist, and the impetus for his projects is not media-specific. He uses the medium he considers relevant in relation to the content, based on drawing, painting, text, photography, installation and film.
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10.04 WEDNESDAY
Photo:Donald Swearingen
Photo:Martynas Milkevičius
Photo:Christer Männikus
VOICES IN BETWEEN
Concert with improvising & performing composers
2 sets of 45 min
Tickets can be ordered at: ticketco.no and v/ entrance
Price: Regular: NOK 100
_cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Student\Honor: NOK 50
Payment by card, cash or tip.
SET 1 - Trio: Pamela Z/ Sten Sandell/ Tone Åse
These musicians met when they played at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco in 2018, and the idea of a collaboration arose immediately. The idea of this composition is to be able to experience the individual musician's solo concept in the light of the others, and also explore possibilities for duos and trios. (Sandell and Åse have already worked together in duo format.) Pamela Z has never before been presented in Norway, but is an important inspiration for many in the vocal, experimental and music technology environment.
The musicians are safely placed in the experimental musical landscape, and are at the same time concerned with the recognisability of the voice in the abstract and improvised. They explore the power, coherence, spaces and transitions in voice/text/sound/music. They work with the voice as both a carrier of meaning and a sonic instrument, but also in symbiosis with the instrumental, Pamela Z and Åse with the electronics, Sandell with the grand piano.
They explore concrete and abstract language and meaning as human imprints and touching elements in larger musical and aural landscapes, both composed and improvised.
About the athletes :
Pamela Z (SF/NY, USA) is a performer, composer and multimedia artist who works primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound and video. A pioneer in digital looping techniques, she processes the voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo work combines experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, objects, text and sampled concrete sounds. She works with digital software and custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical movements. Her performances vary in scale from small concerts in galleries to large multimedia works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her own performances, she has created a number of intermedial works, including multi-channel sound and video installations.
Sten Sandell (Stockholm, Sweden) is a musician, improviser, composer and producer, and works with piano, organ, voice, electronics, text and image. He is a pioneer in improvised/experimental music both as a solo artist, accompanist, composer and multimedia artist. The area of impact is international, and in addition to a large and varied number of musical projects, has also collaborated with a number of artists from other disciplines, such as visual art, dance and theatre.
Tone Åse (Trondheim, Norway) is a performer and composer based on voice and live electronics. In her work, she explores how the use of live electronics gives new roles in the improvised interaction and in the solo format, and how processed vocal sound constitutes unique artistic material. In addition to the work with her solo and band projects, she has worked in parallel with the improvising vocal ensemble Trondheim Voices, which has explored voice and electronics and space in an ensemble context, through site-specific projects.
http://www.toneaase.no/exploring-live-electronics/
Photo:Tobias Johannes Pfeil
Foto: Tommy Johanson
Set 2 - Trio: Sidiki Camara/Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir/ Kristin Norderval
The improvisational musicians Sidiki Camara, Kristin Norderval and Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir are together for the first time in trio format. All three combine voice and instruments - Oddrun: voice and electric guitar, Sidiki: voice and percussion, Kristin: voice and electronic music. Although the musicians come from different musical traditions, all three improvise and like to mix musical expressions.
Oddrun and Kristin have already worked together on the #OccupyOpera project at Den Norske Opera & Ballet, VoxLAB's summer workshop for young performers. Oddrun and Sidiki have often performed together, while this will be the first collaboration for Kristin and Sidiki.
The idea is to mix different traditions, build on compositional skills and vocal skills and do things a little differently in the interdisciplinary work.
About the athletes:
Sidiki Camara (Oslo, Norway) is considered one of Mali's leading percussionists. He is also one of the creators of the modern wave of African Manding music. From the very beginning of his musical career, he was in demand by famous musicians from Mali such as; Toumani Diabate, Oumou Sangare and Habib Koite.
Sidiki Camara has traveled the world as a solo percussionist with Mali's National Ballet. After he left Mali he settled in Brussels where he has continued his brilliant career with stars from Mali's music world: Mamady Keita, Gomma Percussion, Rokia Traore, and Boubacar Traore. He has been a guest artist on several European tours with Bill Frisell's New Quartet and is a regular in Frisell's group The Intercontinentals (with Vinicius Canturia, Cristos Govetas, Greg Leiz and Jenny Scheinman). Sidiki Camara also teaches percussion and is the founder of the cultural exchange program "Yankadi".
For more information about Sidiki Camara and his projects: http://www.sidikicamara.com/
Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir (Oslo, Norway) is known as guitarist and vocalist in "LILJA", "Moksha", Bugge Wesseltoft's "New Conception of Jazz" and Frode Haltli's "Avant Folk". She has made a name for herself as an authentic, exciting and innovative musician and garnered very good reviews at the concerts and recordings she has participated in. In recent years, she has traveled around the world to collaborate with traditional musicians in various countries. Among them, she has worked with raga musicians in India and Nepal, Gnawa musicians in Morocco, Palestinians in a refugee camp in Lebanon and circus artists and traditional musicians in Ethiopia. Inspired by these travels, she has written the work "LILJA: home to the world", which will be published at Jazzland recording in February 2020.
For more information about Oddrun Lilja and her projects:
Kristin Nordeval (NY, Norway) is a performer, singer and composer. In Kristin's compositional landscape, she mixes classical singing and acoustic instrumentation with electronic elements to a completely distinctive, mood-creating soundscape. Kristin is keen to explore the nuances of the human voice, convey a message and create a living and organic expression.
Kristin's repertoire spans the Renaissance to the avant-garde. Her experience as a soprano soloist includes performances with Oslo Sinfonietta, Philip Glass Ensemble, Pomerium, Nederlandsk Danseteater and San Francisco Symphony. She has improvised in a wide range of styles - from free improvisations with Pauline Oliveros to jazz improvisations with composer-vibraphonist Kevin Norton - and has played vocal works by many prominent American composers. Her solo CD "Aural Histories" ended up on The New Yorker's list of "Ten Notable Classical Music Recordings of 2012".
Kristin Norderval's new opera - "The Trials of Patricia Isasa" - premiered in Montreal, Canada in May, 2016 at the Monument National Theater. It garnered praise from critics and received Quebec's OPUS award in two categories: Best Montreal Production of 2016 and Best Contemporary Music of 2016.
For more information about Kristin Norderval and her projects: http://kristinnorderval.org/
11.04 THURSDAY
WITCH
Tickets can be ordered at:
ticketco.no and w/ entrance
Price:
Ordinary: NOK 100
Student\Honours: NOK 50
Payment by card, cash or tip.
CONTRIBUTOR:
Vocal: Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer, Øystein Elle
Prepared guitar: Jo David Meyer Lysne
Textile artist: Inger Johanne Rasmussen
HEXE springs from stories about one of the last Norwegian women who was burned as a witch. Johanne Pedersdatter, who_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-95cf98d_bad to one of the performers, Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer, was executed 29 September 1622 in Stavanger. The court documents from that time and the stories that were told form the starting point for our performance. HEXE was premiered in Tokyo, Japan in June 2018 as a scenic work at the intersection of dance, concert and visual arts and created in an art collective by the performers together with director Janne Hoem.
HEXE is performed nonverbally, through physical, aural images and seeks to portray a situation where an individual is subjected to prejudice and abuse by a misguided mass._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b -136bad5cf58d_The performers on stage appear as material, form and sound to embody fragments of the condemned person's thoughts, memories, hopes, fears and imaginations. Similar processes occur in all societies in different ways at all times, modern or ancient.
The artistic starting point for HEXE is the tonal meeting between the two singers Øystein Elle and Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer and their rich multi-vocal expressions. They seek the uniqueness of the tonal mixture of two voices of different sexes that merge together in different ways. In this concert version of HEXE , Jo David Meyer Lysne with is on prepared guitar and it is the mixture of these three instruments that make up the actual storytelling.
HEXE is based on a historical event and an individual's story, but through the abstract sound image we want to open the narrative to any person who experiences being falsely accused without the opportunity to defend themselves,_cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_and lets audience be its own interpreter or executor of the actions. Please see the link to a youtube clip from the performance in Japan.
About cast:
RUTH WILHELMINE MEYER is a singer and composer with a multivocal expression. Inspired by ethnic vocal sounds, Norwegian folk music, classical vocal tradition and extended vocal expressions from the avant-garde, Meyer has developed a non-verbal vocal expression with a vocal range of more than 6 octaves.
She is active in concerts, stage productions, film scores, sound installations and recordings all over the world. Her last CD: Vox humana was a duo collaboration with composer and organist Nils Henrik Asheim had a basis in sacred music from different cultures. With her multi-expressive vocal expression, she creates sound worlds from the realistic to the unrealistic, the expected and the unexpected and lets the sound itself become the narrator.
For more information about Ruth Wilhelmine and her projects: http://www.wilhelmine.no/
ØYSTEIN ELLE is a singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, actor and director and has a doctorate in performing arts with interdisciplinary composition as her special field, and a master's degree in performance singing with baroque music as specialization. Over the past 20 years, Elle has developed a vocal aesthetic that springs from various vocal traditions from bel canto via punk/post-punk/rock and jazz, to extended vocal techniques in an avant-garde tradition.
He is active in several areas within music and the performing arts field; as a performer, director, co-director and as a composer, he has been presented with a large number of productions in a number of countries in Europe, Asia, the USA and South America. Both their own performances and in artistic co-productions.
JO DAVID MEYER LYSNE is a guitarist and composer with prepared guitar as his main expression. He has a bachelor's degree in improvised music from the Norwegian Academy of Music and is now studying composition at the same institution. In addition to a number of musical collaboration partners and his own solo work, he works closely with bassist Mats Eilertsen and has released a critically acclaimed album with him: Meander. In the past year, he has collaborated with guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama in connection with a new release. He has had concerts in a number of countries, including: Japan, Tanzania, Finland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark.
For more information about Jo David and his projects:
http://jodavidmeyerlysne.com
INGER JOHANNE RASMUSSEN
The well-reputed textile artist Inger Johanne Rasmussen has created the backdrop for HEXE. She has designed the set for "Faust" at the Norwegian Opera, shown large solo exhibitions among others in Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, Sørlandets KunstMuseum, in Stockholm, London and Tokyo. She has been purchased for 5 embassies, and most Norwegian art museums. She was this year's exhibitor at Blåfargeverket in summer 2018 and is currently exhibiting in London.
For more information about Inger Johanne and her projects: http://www.ingerjohanne.no
Pamela Z - Solo Show
Tickets can be ordered at: ticketco.no
and w/ entrance
Price:
Ordinary: NOK 100
Student\Honours: NOK 50
Payment by card, cash or tip.
Pamela Z's Solo Show consists of various vocal works, real-time electronic processing, sampled sounds and interactive video processed with wireless motion controllers.
The evening will include some individual works from her concert repertoire, as well as excerpts from several of her larger musical theater works.
After the performance, we have a short conversation with the artist. An informal meeting and celebration with all involved follows in the VEGA scene's foyer.
About the performer:
Pamela Z (SF/NY, USA) is an internationally recognized performer, composer and pioneer in digital looping techniques. As a multimedia artist, she has been - and still is - an important inspiration for many in the vocal, experimental and music technology environment. Pamela Z primarily works with voice, live electronics, sampled sound and video. She processes the voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers.
Her solo work combines experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, objects, text and sampled concrete sounds. She works with digital software and custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical movements. Her performances vary in scale from small concerts in galleries to large multimedia works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her own performances, she has created a number of intermedial works, including multi-channel audio and video installations.