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This is a transcription of the solo viola piece, made for the Båstad Chamber Music Festival, premiered on June 25, 2003
| SULPHUR PULSE | 2003 (Casa Ricordi) for 6 percussionists, 17’
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This work was commissioned by Les Percussions de Strasbourg with support from the French Ministry of culture. It is dedicated to the memory of Gérard Grisey and is related in a particular way to my memory of him: during his visit to Iceland I took him for a day’s drive. One of the places we visited was a geothermal powerplant near Reykjavik where we took a look at Iceland’s most powerful borehole blowing vapour with immense force and noise. He was very impressed by the sound it made and asked me to record it when I could. I did not accomplish this before he so unexpectedly passed away. In the summer of 2001 I finally made a good recording of this sound and it became sort of the background to this piece, influencing it on different levels.
main performances
Strasbourg, October 6, 2003 (Musica Festival)
Royaumont, August 19, 2005
| SUZANNAH | 2005 Music-theatre based on a play by Jon Fosse 2005 For three female actors, fl , cl , vn , vc , guit , 2 perc , kbd Percussion: player I: 6 cowbells, claves, bass drum, rainstick, maracas, small radio Player II: timpano, xylophone, vibraphone, glockenspiel, triangle 75’
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This is a theatre piece commissioned by the Cinnober Theatre group in Gothemburg and the Göteborg Kammarsolisterna. The text consists in the bigger part of the play Suzannah by Jon Fosse in the Swedish translation by S.A. Löwenborg who also directed the piece. Sometimes I refer to this piece as a spoken opera although the form is also close to the play. There are some features typical of modern music theatre, for instance the fact that the musicians are on stage all the time and sometimes participate in the action. Whatever it might be called the music is certainly on an equal footing with the text. The play stages Henrik Ibsen’s wife, Suzannah, in three different periods of her life. The three Suzannahs are present on stage simultaneously.
main performances
Atalante theatre, Gothemburg, eleven evenings in December 2005 and January 2006. Black Box Theatre, Oslo, two performances scheduled for mid-October 2006.