nyMusikk’s annual sound festival goes digital. The programme will be available from 12:00 each festival day.

Martin Hirsti-Kvam

«Hyperrealities» is a site-specific sound installation by Martin Hirsti-Kvam and was scheduled to open the festival. For this digital version, Hirsti-Kvam has recorded the work at a square in Grønland, Oslo called Teaterplassen, with assistance from Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen and Jennifer Torrence. The sounds from the square blend seamlessly with a virtual soundscape of pre-recorded sounds, exploring the connections between the real and the artificial.

Jen & AM The Destroyers

Jennifer Torrence and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen are two of Norway's foremost percussionists. They say they are on a shared mission, in the name of music, noise, percussion instruments, the body and the voice.

For our digital festival they present a new piece called «Tyngdekraft».

Skogen

Skogen is a Swedish ensemble working at an intersection between contemporary chamber music and improvisation. The ensemble was founded in 2005 and has mainly been performing music by its founder Magnus Granberg.

For Only Connect we are presented with an excerpt from «Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost» by Granberg, from Splitter Festival II, 2019.

My Hellgren / Johan Svensson

Cellist My Hellgren presents composer Johan Svensson’s piece «Marionette»: a duo between a string player and an electro-mechanic structure, built from motors, vibrators, LEDs, light bulbs and relays. As if connected with invisible strings, movements of one player are reproduced in the medium of the other part.

Tøyen Fil og Klafferi

The quartet Tøyen Fil og Klafferi is constantly searching for unexplored possibilities in sound. Here they present works by four different composers: Jessica Sligter, Roberta Lazo Valenzuela, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm and Kristine Tjøgersen. The two last pieces have been recorded for Tøyen Fil og Klafferi’s upcoming album, scheduled for release in June 2020 by Aurora/Grappa.

Mauro Lanza & Olivier Pasquet

Composers Mauro Lanza and Olivier Pasquet created a new soundtrack for the Danish/Swedish silent film «Häxan» (1922) by Benjamin Christensen, as a commission for the Louvre Museum. The soundtrack is algorithmically controlled, with music composed by a large collection of sounds. Here, we are presented with an excerpt from the work.

Oslo Sinfonietta

Oslo Sinfonietta, Norway’s oldest running contemporary ensemble, was established in 1986. Artistic director and chief conductor Christian Eggen has written a new piece for the digital festival:

«Trii in isolamento», a nonet consisting of three isolated groups. Two of the groups – one string and one wind trio – have the same score, but have to find their own interpretations of it without any contact across the groups. The third trio – harp and two percussionists – are fine by themselves. The only thing binding the groups together is a timeline.

Michael Schmid Part1

Michael Schmid is a renowned flutist, but for our online festival he has put together an instruction video with breathing exercises to help us cope with the lock down and give us a much-needed boost. Here is «BREATHCORE: The Sky's The Limit»!

Join the breathing choir in Part 2! Participate with your own breathing video. See the video for instructions.

Send it to breathcore@icloud.com (please send via wetransfer.com) Add your full name for the credits, please! DEADLINE: 24 APRIL 20:00.

In part 2 on Saturday, we are presented with a breathing choir of the submitted videos.

Magda Mayas

Pianist Magda Mayas is known for her distinctive musical vocabulary, utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, with amplification, preparations and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself.

For the digital festival she presents two improvisational pieces: «For Cor I» and «For Cor II». The video provides an intimate view of the performance, usually not available to the audience in live situations. magdamayas.com

Dafne Vicente-Sandoval

«ON THE WALLS THAT CONFINE…» is a video by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval inspired by Jakob Ullmann’s composition «Müntzers stern», as well as by the current impossibility of performing it. The video follows the time structure of the piece, while evoking, through a series of reflections, some of the core qualities of Ullmann's music: intangibility, contingency, fragmentation, doubling, defamiliarization.

The soundtrack uses the recording that is played alongside the live performance in «Müntzers stern»: two overlapping voices reading the fourteen paragraphs of «On contrived faith», a pamphlet in medieval German by the radical Reformation theologian Thomas Müntzer.

Please note that the softness of the soundtrack is deliberate.

Lo Kristenson + Tove Bagge + Vilde Sandve Alnæs + Inga Margrete Aas

Senter for kollektivt skapande was scheduled to have its world premiere of the piece «Senter for Kollektivt Skapande #1» at this year’s Only Connect festival. The string duo Vilde&Inga, composer Lo Kristenson and violist Tove Bagge wants to develop methods for creating new music in a non-hierarchical relationship between composer and musician.

Here they present the creative process of this collaborative project.

Tyler Futrell

Tyler Futrell is an Oslo-based composer, originally from northern California. For our digital festival we present his work «Pas de deux» (2014/15) performed by Karin Hellqvist (violin) and Silje Aker Johnsen (movement).

Futrell’s work «Tunnels» was originally scheduled to be performed at the festival by clarinetists Kristine Tjøgersen and Elena Perales Andreu.

Aviva Endean

Australian artist Aviva Endean experiments with and explores the clarinet’s sound pallet and timbre, resulting in a hypnotic and meditative experience.

The video features works from the launch concert for her debut solo album «cinder : ember : ashes», at the Inland concert series. The album was released on SOFA in 2018.

Insub Meta Orchestra + Skogen

Swiss ensemble Insub Meta Orchestra and Swedish chamber unit Skogen come together in a unique collaboration, demonstrating a carefully structured collective soundmaking.

Whereas IMO is gathered around experimental and electroacoustic practice, Skogen works at an intersection between contemporary chamber music and improvisation.

Two pieces by Cyril Bondi and d’Incise, «Uro-uro remix« and «13 unissons», are presented in this video, from a concert at Koncertkirken in Copenhagen 28 February 2020.

Andreas Borregaard & James Black

Accordionist Andreas Borregaard was going to perform the world premiere of James Black's work «Piece About Everything» at the Only Connect festival. Instead of a live premiere, we are now presenting a workshop presentation of the same piece.

Christian Meaas Svendsen & Ole Martin Huser-Olsen

Christian Meaas Svendsen and Ole Martin Huser-Olsen are two of the members of the ensemble Aksiom who premiered Knut Olaf Sundes «Himdalen» in 2018. Due to the pandemic the musicians were virtually thrown out of Himdalen and reduced to only improvisatory images of themselves. At a safe distance of 457 km they met to tackle - musically - the current crisis.

As reductions, they are gradually expanding - but they had only to connect.

Michael Schmid Part2

«BREATHCORE: The Sky's The Limit» Part 2. Michael Schmid presents a breathing choir of participants demonstrating Schmid’s exercises from Part 1.

If you would like to join the choir, see Part 1 on Friday for instructions.

Knut Olaf Sunde

Composer Knut Olaf Sunde’s 13 hour concert installation «Himdalen» premiered in the pine-clad hills of Himdalen, a small, unpopulated valley an hour east of Oslo. The site is home for Norway’s only storage and repository facility for radioactive waste. This film documents the happening on 24 November 2018.