The Grieg Academy Composition Resarch Group


The Grieg Academy Composition Research Group serves to explore new possibilities for compositional experimentation and innovation while fostering rigorous analysis, discussion and debate about issues pertaining to the vast field of music composition as it exists today. Both faculty and students from the Grieg Academy present their work within this forum alongside national and international guest composers, artists, scholars and researchers. Meetings are held several times each semester and often integrate workshop and performance frameworks.


Research Group Leader: Dániel Péter Biró, Professor for Composition, Grieg Academy.

 

Meeting 1

Friday, Nov. 9, 2018 Grieg Academy John Lunds plass 3 Seminarrom 106 14:00 – 16:30

Topic: Form of Ritual: Ritual of Form
In today’s globalized, technology-driven world, composers have developed countless strategies to communicate their ideas. Some of these strategies have sought to create new aesthetic paradigms while others have sought to reinvent existing rituals and forms. Within this framework, important questions have arisen of how contemporary methodologies relate to past concepts of form and to corresponding new and/or existing ritual frameworks.
The following research group looks to investigate such questions in the context of contemporary music composition and related fields. Just as the question of form has relevance for the presentation of and the context for musical material, a new conception of form and ritual might allow for new methodologies to understand and communicate musical content in new and meaningful ways. These questions will be dealt with in a variety of contexts, with invited composers, musicians and philosophers presenting lectures, workshops and concerts that deal specifically with this topic. The research group will set out to investigate possibilities for critical reflection about and creative production of form as ritual and ritual as form in order to allow for new perspectives for contemporary music composition and its related disciplines.

14:00 Tijs Ham, PhD Candidate, Grieg Academy, University of Bergen:

Calm & Chaos

14:45: Craig Wells, PhD Candidate, Grieg Academy, University of Bergen: 

Materiality and the Form of Encounter

15:30 Break (cake and coffee)
15:45: Thorolf Thuestad, PhD Candidate, Grieg Academy, University of Bergen:

Emotional Machine: Composing for Unstable Media

Moderator: Dániel Péter Biró, Grieg Academy 


Meeting 2

Form of Ritual: Ritual of Form 
Saturday Dec. 15, 2018

Meeting at John Lunds plass 3, Room 106 (Seminar Room: Ground Floor)

14:00: Prof. Gunnar Hindrichs (University of Basel): A Theory of Musical Form.

15:30: Dániel Péter Biró (Grieg Academy, UiB): Discussion about new research collaboration bridging music, philosophy and the natural sciences (in collaboration with Gunnar Hindrichs and Grit Schwarzkopf). 16:00: Informal discussion session at Nedre Nygaard, Nygårdsgaten 31.


Gunnar Hindrichs is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Basel. His publications include: Das Absolute und das Subjekt. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Metaphysik und Nachmetaphysik (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2008) Die Autonomie des Klangs. Eine Philosophie der Musik (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014). Prof. Hindrichs is editor of the series Konzepte. Hefte für Philosophie (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann).


Dr. Grit Schwarzkopf is a Researcher in Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. She has done work in the bridged the areas of philosophy, aesthetics and the natural sciences. She has written Käthchen und Senta. Partnerfindung als Traumspiel in Heinrich von Kleists „Das Käthchen von Heilbronn“ und in Richard Wagners „Der fliegende Holländer“ (Heidelberg 2015) and „Das Kantische Raummodell in der Neurobiologie“(Kant-Studien, 2017).


Meeting 3

Wednesday, May 15, 2019 Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Professor for Composition, University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy", Leipzig, Germany

14:00: Lecture: "Hommage: A Philosophical Perspective", Room 206, Grieg Academy

19:00: Group Instruction for composition students, Room 106, John Lunds plass

Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, born in 1962 in Mannheim (Germany), studies in composition, music theory, piano, musicology, philosophy, and sociology with Brian Ferneyhough, Klaus Huber, Jürgen Habermas among others. Music degree and PhD. Since 1984 international prizes and awards, including the Gaudeamus Prize, Stuttgart Composition Prize, Ernst von Siemens Music Grant, Villa Massimo. Since 2005 Professor of Composition at the Leipzig Academy of Music and Theater. Editor of the journal Musik & Ästhetik and the book series New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century, author of over 150 essays and numerous books.


Meeting 4

Room 106, John Lunds plass

13:00: Natasha Barrett: Emergence Inverted: Decomposing the 3D Soundscape as Compositional Materials

Many composers of electroacoustic music approach materials and structure in the reverse to traditional instrumental composition. The sound they use has structure in itself and the nature of the object informs the structure of the work. This original aspect of Musique Concrète is still with us: instead of creating the abstract score, leaving it to known instruments and known performance techniques to realise the score, which leads to the concrete experience in the performance, composers gather sound and abstract the musical values it potentially contains; starting with concrete listening and often ending in an abstract(ed) musical discourse. In this presentation I will illustrate how I am composing sound from space through a process of decomposition and then recomposition of the soundscape. Emergence is inverted: a complex system already exists in the recorded source (concrete sound), yet it can be picked apart to reveal each components' individual behavior and qualities (extracted, abstracted). Through experimentation, a new system may emerge in the recomposition of these elements.

 

Friday June 7th Stein Rokkans Hus Studio A, Grieg Academy

10.00 – 16.00: Sculpting Sound in Space

Performed spatialisation, otherwise known as sound diffusion, has its history in the acousmonium loudspeaker orchestra that grew up at GRM (Group de Recherches Musicales, Paris) in the 70’s. Since this time, sound diffusion has underpinned the performance of stereo electroacoustic music throughout the world. First-hand experience of sound diffusion offers vital insights important for composers working with sound in space. Even for composers not working in the stereo format, it is an important stepping stone towards understanding how to work musically and spatially with more advanced technologies such as ambisonics. In the workshop we will set up a multi-speaker array and enjoy hands-on experiments with both musical materials and speaker placements. Participants can play with a set piece, and are also invited to bring their own materials. The evening concert will feature a showcase of works from the famous female pioneer Beatriz Ferreyra (b. 1937). The concert will be performed by Natasha Barrett. Ferreyra was associated with the GRM, founded by Pierre Schaeffer at Radio France in the 1950’s. After moving from her native Argentina to Paris in 1963, she made her own radical, vivid music at the GRM. She soon began to explore sound diffusion performance of her works at GRM and in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Festival. Ferreyra lives in France and is still active composing and performing throughout the world. The concert will also present pieces from workshop participants.

 

Natasha Barrett is a British contemporary music composer specialising in electroacoustic art music. Her compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues. In addition to acousmatic concert music, she composes for instruments, live electronics, sound installations, multi-media works, real-time computer music improvisation, has made soundscapes for exhibitions, and music for contemporary dance and theater. Since 2000 her work has been influenced by spatialisation as a musical parameter, and the projection of 3-D sound-fields. 


Meeting 5

Monday, 28 October, 2019 at 15:00 in Gunnar Sævigs Sal, The Grieg Academy. 

Professor Kofi Agawu, Distinguished Professor, The Graduate Centre, New York: Finding the beat in African music: Further Notes and Caveats

A central issue for (mainly non-African) analysts of African music is the question of a regulative beat: does it exist, is it made manifest or merely assumed, and is there a single beat in ensemble performance, or are there multiple beats? Proceeding from the belief that what is now needed is not another grand, overarching theory of African rhythm but detailed studies of individual performances, this paper describes some of the factors that shape beat awareness in a handful of West and Central African repertories. I note the absence of a word for beat in many indigenous languages, along with the normative embodiment of meter by dancers. My main caveat is that beats are not intrinsic to the sonic material and so cannot be discovered by internal means; rather, beats are mental constructs of conventional origins brought to the music by acculturated listeners, drummers and dancers.


Kofi Agawu was born in Ghana, where he received his initial education before studying composition and analysis in the UK and musicology in the US. His work focuses on analytical issues in selected repertoires of Western Europe and West Africa. He is the author of five monographs and numerous articles and reviews. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Dent Medal, the Frank Llewellyn Harrison Medal, the Howard T. Behrman Award from Princeton University, and honorary degrees from Stellenbosch University (2017) and Bard College (2019). He has served on the editorial boards of leading journals in musicology, music theory, African studies and ethnomusicology. A Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, he is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Honorary Member of the Royal Musical Association, and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. He was Music Theorist in Residence for the Dutch-Flemish Music Theory Society in 2008-09 and George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford University in 2012-13.


Meeting 6

Sounding Philosophy Conference

November 1, 2019 , Grieg Academy, Prøvesalen, Lars Hilles gate 3

Christopher Senf, Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Session Moderator

15:00 Prof. Elhanan Yakira, Hebrew University Jerusalem: “Spinoza’s Ontology of the Intellect”

16:00 Prof. Dániel Péter Biró, Grieg Academy: “Parametric Composition in the Ethica Composition Cycle.”

17:00 Coffee Break

17:30 Dr. Grit Schwarzkopf, University of Heidelberg, “Was ist Teleologie?”

November 2 Grieg Academy, Gunnar Sævigs Sal, Lars Hilles gate 3

Dániel Péter Biró, Grieg Academy, Session Moderator

10:00 Prof. Gunnar Hindrichs: On Hanslick’s proposition: “Composition is spiritual work on spiritually capable material.”

11:00 Coffee Break

11:30 Prof. Arnulf Mattes, Grieg Academy: “Intoxicating Oscillations: Ernst Mach and Arnold Schoenberg”

Concerts and Performances:

November 6, 2019

Norwegian Youth Chamber Music Festival

Atelier of Kjell Pahr-Iversen, Stavanger

Ethica, after Baruch Spinoza Composition by Dániel Péter Biró, Professor for Composition, Grieg Academy, University of Bergen

Choreography by Hagit Yakira, Associate Professor for Dance, University of Stavanger

Paintings of Kjell Pahr-Iversen, Stavanger

Introductory lecture by Elhanan Yakira, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Festival Curator: Ingrid Catharina Geuens,  Førstelektor, Grieg Academy

November 9, 2019 15.30

Peer Gynt-salen, Grieghallen

Dániel Péter Biró: Ethica after Baruch Spinoza (2017-2020)

Works by Grieg Academy composition students Gunhild Seim, Lisa Braathen, Anders Hannevold and Bendik Savstad, involved in the Sounding Philosophy Worksop and other works by Knut Vaage.

BIT20 Ensemble

Dániel Péter Biró, Trond Madsen, conductors


Meeting 7

Grieg Academy Music Composition Research Group

Music and Emergence

Friday, March 8, 2019 10:00 - 13:00

John Lunds plass 3 Room 106 (ground floor)

Presenting:

10:00 Marcelo Toledo, Columbia University: On Recent Works

11:00 Dániel Péter Biró, Grieg Academy, University of Bergen Emergence in Music-Parametric Domains Break: Presentation of new book: "Live Electronics im/in the SWR Experimentalstudio" (Wolke Verlag)

www.wolke-verlag.de/musikbuecher/live-electronics-im-in-the-swr-experimentalstudio/

12:00 Carmina Escobar, California Institute for the Arts: Improvisation and Emergence

 

Meeting 8

March 29 from 13:00 - 16:00, seminar room (room 106) John Lunds plass 3.

13:00: Erik Håkon Halvorsen, composition, masters program, Grieg Academy and Markus Eriksen, cello performance, masters program, Grieg Academy: "Mit innigster Empfindung."

14:00: Break

14:15 Tijs Ham and Craig Wells, PhD Candidates in composition, Artistic Research Program, Grieg Academy: "Contemplations on Punk Virtuosity"


Meeting 9

March 5, 2020 at 15:30 John Lunds Plass Seminar Room 106 (1st Floor)

Prof. George Lewis, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at at Columbia University: Where Do Words Go? 

In his extraordinary book, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, critical theorist Fred Moten quotes the saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who responds to an invitation to comment verbally on his music by assuring his interlocutor that "Words don't go there." In response, theorist (and poet) Moten asks the simple and obvious, yet profound question: "Where do words go?" This talk explores the methodologies and aesthetics underlying a set of works for voice, including chamber music, mixed electroacoustic works, and operas written by George Lewis between 1996 and the present.

 

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis’s other honors include a MacArthur Genius Award (2002), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently Prof. Lewis received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2018).


Meeting 10

Oct. 5, 2020 at 18:00 in Prøvesalen.

18:00: Séverine Ballon, Composer/Cellist, Paris, France. Extending the Cello as an Expressive Force. 
Séverine Ballon will discuss recent work that investigates extending technical and acoustic possibilities of the cello. In particular, she will discuss the work on the pieces Solitude by Rebecca Saunders and Adiantum Capillus Veneris by Chaya Czernowin, which has been transcribed from the voice.

 

19:00 Tijs Ham, PhD Candidate, Grieg Academy: Unfinished Instruments. In his talk, Tijs Ham will explore the artistic possibilities that arise when instruments shift from being reliable companions in musical performances, towards becoming a much more elusive and pliable source of unstable sonic material.

 

20:00: Juan Vassallo, PhD Candidate, Grieg Academy: Research on Voice as a Sonorous and Visual Entity. 
The current artistic research project focuses on the sonic and visual world of the human voice and the performativity of its material components, aiming to create a set of pieces that will serve as a compositional intermedial exploration of this complex element.

 

Meeting 11

Nov 2, 2020 Zoom Meeting

15:30 Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro, Universidade Estadual do Paraná (Brazil): Braidotti and Posthumanism

As a composer, I am currently researching how the concept of defamiliarization (Braidotti) could be applied as a strategy for musical composition. Defamiliarization can be understood as critical distance, disidentification, or even deterritorialization (Deleuze). In other words, composition is not regarded in our analysis as simple “sound construction”. We observe that the development of new music since the beginning of the 20th century is highly connected with the idea of structure as language. As a consequence, language (Adorno) and perception (Deleuze) as well as cultural and political questions of posthumanism (Braidotti; hooks) become important aspects for our investigation.

Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro (1980) is a Brazilian composer of instrumental and electroacoustic music. He was a student of Dániel Péter Biró, Gordon Mumma, and Cort Lippe throughout his master’s and PhD-level studies. His music has been performed in various concert halls in a number of countries, including the U.S., Germany, Hungary, Austria, England, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Dr. Ribeiro is currently a faculty member at the Universidade Estadual do Paraná (Brazil). As an academic, he is the editor-in-chief of the Vortex Music Journal (ISSN 2317-9937) and the director of the SiMN (International Symposium of New Music). 

16:00: Dániel Péter Biró, Grieg Academy: Some Thoughts about Temporal Structures in Acoustic and Electroacoustic Composition

Béla Bartók discussed two types of rhythm in folk music: tempo giusto and parlando rubato. These two types of rhythmic orientation become abstracted in notational practices as duration becomes paramount. Such considerations also relate to questions of musical space. I will discuss different historical and contemporary concepts of rhythm and space as well as recent strategies in acoustic and electroacoustic compositions. Dániel Péter Biró is Professor for Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004. In 2014-2015 he was a Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dániel Péter Biró has been commissioned by prominent musicians, ensembles and festivals and his compositions are performed around the world.


Meeting 12

Friday, November 13, 2020 10:00 on Zoom
Exchange Workshop between Grieg Academy Hochschule for Künste, Fachbereich Musik in Bremen, Germany.

The workshop, in German, dealt with the creation of the composition "De Natura et Origine" by Dániel Péter Biró and performed by Prof. Margit Kern and Katharina Bäuml (Ensemble Mixtura)

 

Meeting 13

Monday, Nov. 30, 2020, Zoom

18:00: Marta Gentilucci: Composing for Voice 
The presentation will focus on the musical research of the past years around voice, vibrato and their integration in acoustic and electroacoustic domains.

Marta Gentilucci completed her studies in vocal arts as a soprano and she obtained her Master in composition and composition/computer music at the University of Music Stuttgart. She was selected for the two years program in computer music. She held a Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University. Her electronic and instrumental music has been performed in several international Music Festivals and venues. Among her recent residencies are, the Artistic Research Residency at Ircam, at Experimentalstudio des SWR in Freiburg, and at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University. 

19:00: Juliana Hodkinson: Resounding Failure

Drawing on some of my own recent and current research on resonance and composition, and taking up Robin James’ examination of the sonic episteme in the service of preserving and advancing qualitative structures of capitalism, patriarchy and white suprematism, I will discuss the dilemma of composition as a conflicted field of practice and reflection, struggling with, on the one hand, its inheritance of a highly individualised notion of the uniqueness of expression and experience, and, on the other, a desire to become relevant in broader humanist and post-humanist discourses.

Juliana Hodkinson is a composer, Associate Professor in Classical and Electronic Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus and Associate Professor in Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen.  She has published on topics within affective resonance, re-enactment, migration, gender and social relations in sonic practices.  Her current artistic work focuses on creating hybrid spatialised electro-acoustic formats for performance and listening, often in collaboration with other artists.


Meeting 14

Monday, Dec. 14, 2020

15:00: Suzanne Farrin: Dolce la Morte

Suzanne Farrin discusses movements from her opera Dolce la Morte as well as recent work.

Suzanne Farrin (DMA, Yale University) is the Frayda B. Lindemann Professor and Chair of Music at Hunter College and The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, where she teaches composition. She was a 2018 Rome Prize Winner and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition. Her debut recording, Corpo di Terra, was described in Timeout Chicago as, “like field recordings from inside the cerebral cortex.” Recent commissions include works for the JACK Quartet and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her works for the stage and film have been performed around the world. In addition to composing, she is a performer of the ondes Martenot.

16:00 Trond Lossius: Edgelands

The electroacoustic composition Edgelands (2019) starts out from a series of field recordings from the suburbs and fringes of the city. The presentation discusses the motivation for engaging with suburban soundscapes, the use of ambisonic surround-sound field recordings to capture a sense of place and reflects on the compositional process.

Trond Lossius investigates the dynamics of sound, place and space in field recordings, audio-visual installations and collaborative cross-disciplinary projects, with a particular interest in the soundscapes of the suburb. He develops open-source software for spatial audio and real-time media for use in his own projects, and he has published research in international conferences and journals on sound and music computing. He is professor and PhD-leader at The Norwegian Film School and professor II at The Grieg Academy.


Meeting 15

Feb. 15, 2021 14:00 Øyvind Torvund: Dreaming about Music

A short talk about getting inspiration and ideas for new pieces, about Disney and Modernism and the gap between dreams and reality.

Øyvind Torvund, b. 1976. is a Norwegian composer. Often there is a paradoxical mixture of elements in his music: melodies encounter conceptual ideas, acoustic chamber music together with lo-fi sounds from home made instruments. Many of his pieces circles around the idea of an archaic music and the representation of naïve idyllic situations.

 

Meeting 16

March 15, 2021

19:00 Michael Getman: On Recent and Ongoing Work

Michael Getman will talk about recent and upcoming choreography, which employs the spoken word, poetry, literature as a sound score to convey depth of emotions, attention and dimensionality. He will also discuss the ongoing project "Songs and Borders" which explores, via dance, music and theatre, the multi-religious and multi-ethnic realities in the border region between Israel and Syria.

Michael Getman is a choreographer based in Israel. His work merges choreography, theatre and performance and examines relationships between our bodily actions, cognitive responses, subjective experiences, as well as the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions.
His works have been presented at festivals and venues around the world and he has been awarded international prizes for his choreography.


20:00: Zeynep Gedizlioglu: Imagination that forms new relationships between Silence, Now and the Hearing In her talk, composer Zeynep Gedizlioglu will discuss recent work that is inspired by and deals with the activity of hearing as such and its relationship to compositional processes, space and place.
Zeynep Gedizlioglu Born in Izmir/Turkey, she studied composition with i.a. Wolfgang Rihm as well as music theory with Michael Reudenbach and completed the ‚Cursus‘ at IRCAM between 2010-11. Her music has been performed at leading international festivals and published on Cds. She received numerous prizes such as the Composers’ Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Heidelberg Female Artist Award and the Berlin Art Prize of Akademie der Künste Berlin.


Meeting 17

April 12, 2021

14:00 

Samir Odeh-Tamimi: Composing for the Human Voice.

Composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi will present four works from 2014 to 2017: GIDIM for large orchestra and electronics, CAPRICORNUS for ensemble, speaker and soprano, MANSUR for large mixed choir and instruments and JARICH for three female voices and electronics. 


Born in Jaljulia near Tel-Aviv, Samir Odeh-Tamimi has developed a distinctive musical language, which draws upon his intense involvement with both western avantgarde music and Arabic musical performance practice. Samir Odeh-Tamimi’s works are regularly performed at renowned festivals and concert halls throughout the world.

https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/Composers/O/Odeh-Tamimi-Samir.aspx 


Stephan Meidell: TRIGGER

Stephan will present his multidisciplinary project TRIGGER, with which he released the album «Cycles & Causality» in March '21. He will give insights into the advantages of fusing composition practices from musique conrète with today's digital workflow.


Stephan Meidell is a Norwegian guitarist, composer, and sound designer.

He has studied jazz at the Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam. He is currently doing a Ph.D. in Artistic Research at the University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.

https://stephanmeidell.com/

 

Meeting 18

May 3, 2021
19:00 

Juan Vassallo: Versificator

The piece “Versificator” for vocal ensemble is conceived as a metaphor for and a manner of bringing alive the original versificator, a fictional device created by George Orwell in the novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) whose primary purpose is to act as an automated generator for both text and music.

Juan Sebastián Vassallo is a composer, pianist and media artist. He obtained his MA degree at the University of Victoria (Canada) and currently he is pursuing his PhD in Artistic Research at the University of Bergen (Norway).

https://www.juanvassallo.com/

 

Andrea Parkins: Correspondences: The Body and Material in Installation and Performance

Andrea Parkins discusses her daily practice in which she investigates the performing body’s relation to materiality, sound, site and space. Parkins’ research explores correspondences between gesture and sound - addressing tensions between failure and fluency, and absence and presence.

Andrea Parkins is a sound artist, composer, and electroacoustic improviser who engages with interactive electronics as both material and process.  Her performances and fixed media works have been presented at Whitney Museum of American Art, Kunsthalle Basel, Kusthall Bergen, and many more.

https://soundcloud.com/andreaparkins


Tijs Ham: Dread & Promise

Starting from an artistic practice informed by chaos and unpredictability, the aesthetics of my works have always been related to 'exploration', 'discovery', and 'surprise'. In this talk, an effort will be made to unfold these terms and to place them within a temporal context, touching upon topics such as durational nows, perceptional confusions, imaginations of what has occurred, and memories of what is to come.

Tijs Ham (1981) is a Dutch Sound Artist, currently working in Bergen as a Ph.D. candidate in Artistic Research at the KMD. In his work, he focuses on the exploration of chaotic processes within the field of live electronic music. Using both digital and analog approaches, this exploration takes the form of the development of new musical instruments, investigating compositional strategies, and performing concerts. Before moving to Norway, Tijs has been working at STEIM, both as an organizer and as a member of the artistic board. He releases music using his AKA Tapage.

https://bandcamp.com/tapage

  

Meeting 19

October 17 - 18, 2022

Visit of Andrea Szigetvári, Liszt Academy, Budapest, Hungary
Andrea Szigetvári is an electroacoustic music composer. Her creative and research interests are timbre in new music, interactive performance, audiovisual art and politically involved electroacoustic music theater. She likes to compose every detail of her works leaving space for improvisation and expression as performative interpretations of her ideas. She studied in Warsaw and then as a Fulbright scholar in the USA, later completing her doctorate studies at the Liszt Academy Budapest. Currently she is a reader of Composition Faculty at the Liszt Academy, Budapest leading the Electronic Music Media Art program. In addition to composing and teaching she has organized international new music festivals, conferences and pan-european projects being the founder and leader of Hungarian Computer Music Foundation. Her pieces have been performed throughout Europe and the USA. She won the Prize at the Bourges Electroacoustic Competition in both Sound Art and Multimedia categories in 2001.

Andrea Szigetvári gave a course for Grieg Academy composition students on Monday, October 17, 2022 from 14:30-16:30, John Lunds plass 3, Room 106 (ground floor), University of Bergen. On October 18, 2022, her composition Marhakaralábé/Beef Calarabi Cantata was performed by mezzo-soprano Zsuzsa Zseni at 19:30 in Studio A. The concert was followed by a discussion about the composition with Dániel Péter Biró. 

The visit of Andrea Szigetvári is part of the The Listening Academy, which is generously supported by a research grant by the Faculty of Fine-Arts, Music and Design. Project Leaders: Brandon LaBelle, Professor for New Media, Department of Art and Dániel Péter Biró, Professor for Composition, Grieg Academy. We are grateful for this support.

www.szigetvariandrea.com


Meeting 20

February 22, 2023 at 14:00. Grieg Academy, John Lunds plass 3, Room 106. 

Dominic Murcott, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, London, UK: "Heavy Metals"

Heavy Metals: The Harmonic Canon and why humans like bells. A look at the physics of bell tones and a dive into a piece written for a 1/2 computer-designed double-bell.
Dominic Murcott is a London-based composer who started life as a punk drummer and is now best known as a composer of electronic and acoustic music, in particular the award-winning Harmonic Canon for two percussionists and a custom made ½ ton bell. He is Head of Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

http://dominicmurcott.com/


Meeting 21

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 14:00 in Studio A, The Grieg Academy

Lars Petter Hagen: On Composition
Renowned composer Lars Petter Hagen will discuss his compositional work. 

Lars Petter Hagen (Norway) is a composer and curator. His practice is in symphonic and chamber music as well as electronic and interdisciplinary work. Hagen has been represented at such events as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Maerzmusik, Gaudeamus Music Week, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Ultima festival. He commissions include pieces for SWR Symphony orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. He teaches regularly at the Darmstadt Summer Course. Lars Petter Hagen has been the artistic director of Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, The Nordic Music Days and Happy Days Sound Festival. Since may 2022 he has been Artistic director and CEO of Bergen international Festival. He came from the position as Head of Development in the Oslo-Philharmonic and chair of the Norwegian Arts Council.

Meeting 22
Professor Hakan Ulus from the Gustav Mahler Private University for Music in Klagenfurt, Austria will visit the Grieg Academy as an Erasmus Exchange Program on May 8 – 9, 2023.
Professor Ulus will give two lectures as part of the Grieg Academy Composition Research Group and give classes for composition students.
Monday, May 8, 2023
14:00
John Lunds Plass 3 Seminar Room 106 (Ground Floor)
Ritual, Recitation and Archeology:
Aspects of my Compositional Work
Lecture 2: Tuesday, May 9, 2023 16:00
John Lunds Plass 3 Seminar Room 106 (Ground Floor)
What Does Artistic Research in Composition Mean? 
Meeting 23
Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 16:00 
Room 106 John Lunds plass 3.
Dániel Péter Biró, Ljubov Katerli, Ana Maria Oancea, Erik Håkon Halvorsen, Juan Vassallo:
Composing For Strings and String Quartet
How does one compose for strings and for string quartet in 2023? Reflecting on the concert and workshop of the Arditti Quartet, we will look into the particularities of writing for string instruments and the string quartet genre in terms of its relation to musical material and form. In particular Dániel Péter Biró's new work Teshuvah (Return) along with pieces composed by students in 2023 for the Arditti Quartet will be analyzed and discussed.
Meeting 24
Composition Workshop with Marta Gentilucci
Sunday, September 10,  2023
15:30 – 18:30 Vaktmesterbolig, Grieg Academy
A meeting between composer Marta Gentilucci, local composers and Grieg Academy composition students in a session of research-based teaching of music composition.

Meeting 25
Friday, March 15 at 10:00 in room 106 of John Lunds plass 3.

10:00 Johan Sara Jr.

On New Works

Johan Sara Jr. will discuss Sami jahkodaga, acustemologic as well as sami music, joik and vocal techniques and other things. 

Johan Sara Jr. is an innovative performer in one of Europe’s oldest song traditions, Sami music from the Arctic, the joik. His unique combination of joik and contemporary elements provides a hypnotic and meditative sound, which has been praised both at home and abroad. His music has confirmed his position as a vital, fresh and genre free innovator. Johan Sara Jr. was born in Alta and grew up with reindeer herders on the vast snow-covered tundra in the arctic north. He is now settled in the Sami town of Maze. He was born into a culture where nature and the natural was everywhere, a culture where the joik had a central position and had a mother who had a strong interest in maintaining this tradition. To Johan Sara joik is therefore so much more than an artistic expression; it is his history and legacy. The Sami traditional songs, the joik, took the sounds of nature; the wind, the tundra and the sounds of the animals, and let the Sami shaman, the noaidi, express it as music. It is said about the joik that it has no beginning and no end; it started with the sounds of nature and is in an eternal loop that is ever evolving. Joik is a song tradition involving few words which gives the listeners the opportunity of free associations and spiritual experiences. Johan Sara Jr. has through his own unique expression continued a thousand year old tradition by adapting the joik to his reality and his contemporary time. Johan Sara Jr. connects the modern to the natural, the sound image of the future with the music of the past and will in this way give his small contribution to make mankind recover the original, the natural and the human. «Everything goes so fast. We no longer have the time to find peace. We have moved so far from the natural that it affects our health, both personal and in relation to how we treat our nature. We need to find peace. In ourselves and with ourselves», says Johan Sara Jr.

10:45

Andreas Kühne

Sounding Material Culture: Field improvisation as a transdisciplinary field method

Mediated through several collaborative projects,  the anthology proposes field improvisation as a methodology for situated "listening-with" material that helps us to reflect on our entanglement in the multitude of relational affects between our bodies and more-than-human beings [Wright, 2022].

Andreas Kühne is a Dutch sound artist and PhD fellow in electronic music and music technology at UiT creating electroacoustic music, collaborative audiovisual performances and interactive installations based on self-assembled archives.

11:30

Juan Vassallo and Sergej Tchirkov

Oscillations: A hybrid (human-computer) re-imagined space for Schubert-Müller’s “Winterreise”

The work “Oscillations” engages a multitude of modalities— spoken and sung vocalization, piano, and toy piano sonorities, electroacoustic soundscapes, visual narratives via video, and the interplay of projections and light design. Drawing inspiration from the song cycle “Winterreise”, written by W. Muller and set in music by F. Schubert, “Oscillations” focuses on inquiries at the intersection between AI and human creative cognition, in times when powerful generative deep-learning models are emerging and are becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives.

Juan Sebastián Vassallo is an Argentinian composer based in Bergen, Norway. He holds a master’s degree in music perception and cognition and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Artistic Research at the University of Bergen. His current artistic research aims to explore possibilities for human-computer interaction in art creation, encompassing points of intersection between computer-assisted composition, artificial intelligence, algorithmic poetry, generative visuals, and live electronics. In parallel, he has an active career as a pianist and arranger of Argentine Tango. In recent years, some of his compositions have been awarded in national and international competitions in France, China, and Argentina. Some of his past artistic projects have received support from the UNESCO and Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI).

Sergej Tchirkov has been guest lecturer at the universities of music in Zürich, Graz, Gothenburg, Lucerne and Geneva. In 2013 - 2021 he was deputy artistic director of the Studio for New Music ensemble and university lecturer in contemporary music at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He performs with major European ensembles for contemporary music and has premiered more than 300 works for accordion. He is a PhD research fellow in artistic research at the Grieg Academy, UiB.


Meeting 26
Lucas Fels, Pofessor of interpretation of new music, chamber music and music communication at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt am Main 
T
hursday, April 18 2024 14:30 – 15:30 Cello Masterclass, Studio A, Grieg Academy
16.00 – 18.00: Workshop on contemporary music for string players, Gunnar Sævigs sal
Friday, April 19 2024 9:30 – 12:30 Reading of works by composition students Place: Gunnar Sævigs sal
Lucas Fels, Professor of interpretation of new music, chamber music and music communication at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and cellist in the Arditti Quartet will be Erasmus Visiting Faculty at the Grieg Academy from 17 - 19 April. Prof. Fels will present a master class for cello and a workshop on contemporary music for strings. There will also be a reading of works by our composition students About Lucas Fels: Lucas Fels (*1962) is a German cellist and teacher who specialises in the performance and interpretation of music of the 20th century and contemporary music. He studied cello with Christoph Henkel in Freiburg, Anner Bijlsma in Amsterdam und Amadeo Baldovino in Fiesole. In 1985 he co-founded ensemble recherche, which focuses on the performance of chamber music from the 20th and 21st centuries, and participated as cellist until 2005. In 2006 he joined the Arditti Quartet in London and continued his wide-ranging concert activities across the globe, performing hundreds of contemporary works and collaborating closely with composers. He has been professor of Interpretational Performance Practice of New Music, Chamber music and the Communication of Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main since 2013. He is active as a soloist with a broad solo repertoire from the last century and the present day and has performed, taught and lectured internationally. Prof. Fels has been actively involved as a tutor with the Darmstadt Summer School since 1998. He is the chairman of the Friends and Supporters of the IMD Darmstadt. His skills as a musician, teacher and communicator have been called upon by the Goethe Institute, the Musikfonds of the German Ministry of Culture and Media, The Deutsche Musikrat, The Zender Foundation and the Hepner Foundation. Fels’ research interests also include a keen focus on notation. An example of this is his work on the new notation and edition of Lachenmann’s “Pression”, in collaboration with the composer.
https://ardittiquartet.com/lucas-fels


Meeting 27

September 17, 2024

12:00 – 15:00
Gunnar Sævigs Sal
Grieg Academy

12:00

Laura Farré Rozada
Conceptual Simplification: Formalisation of a Method to Simplify Complexity in Post-Tonal Piano Music
There is a gap in music performance, education and psychology in terms of memorisation training for post-tonal piano music. Despite the repertoire spanning over 100 years, pedagogues and professionals still lack effective tools for developing this skill. Existing research on this domain is mostly focused on observing practitioners’ behaviours during practice, to understand how these prepare for a memorised performance of a selected repertoire. However, a systematic method for effective memorisation is not provided. This lecture discusses a new method for the analysis, learning and memorisation of post-tonal piano music, named Conceptual Simplification (Farré Rozada, 2024). This is informed by certain areas of mathematics and computer science and aims to enhance musical memory and performance.

Dr. Laura Farré Rozada is an award-winning pianist and mathematician, deemed a 'Rising Star' by BBC Music Magazine and a 'New Talent' by the BIME Equity Awards 2022. She also received the American Classical Young Musician Award 2022 in Washington D.C. (USA). Her PhD at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Midlands4Cities AHRC Doctoral Studentship. As a soloist, Laura released two award-winning albums, and performed in the main cities of Spain, France, Germany, Canada, USA, Bulgaria, Serbia, UK, Singapore and Argentina. Some of the composers she worked with include George Crumb, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, Rebecca Saunders and Márton Illés. She has also given over 70 world and national premieres of works by Unsuk Chin, Philippe Manoury, David Lang, George Lewis, Dai Fujikura, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Pierre Jodlowski, Vladimir Djambazov, Thierry Escaich, Ofer Ben-Amots, Tyshawn Sorey and Piyawat Louilarpprasert, among others. As a researcher, Laura specialised in music and mathematics, musical memory, performance psychology and the post-tonal repertoire. She has been invited as a guest lecturer to universities in Spain, Malta, UK, USA, Canada, Chile and Mexico; and presented her work at conferences organised by the Royal Musical Association (RMA), American Musicological Society (AMS), European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM), Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) and Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO).

https://www.laurafarrerozada.com/

13:00 
Sebastián Zubieta

“Where do they go when the curtain falls?”: voice/text/stage

Over the past few years, my music has been about the intersection between music, poetry, and the stage (real or virtual). I will share reflections on the constantly shifting interaction of these elements and on how I see my musical activity.

Sebastián Zubieta (b. Buenos Aires, 1967) is a composer and conductor living in New York. Recent commissions include the chamber opera MadreÁmbar, which premiered online at the Festival Nueva Opera de Buenos Aires in 2020, and Je vens d’lué, a solo guitar piece written for João Luiz. He is currently working on a new work on the poetry of Juan Gelman for voices and percussion. He is the director of the vocal ensemble Meridionalis, with which he has performed contemporary and early music in the United States and Latin America. The ensemble gave the Latin American and New York City premieres of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus in 2018 and 2019 and released its debut album on NAXOS in 2019. He has also conducted live and online works including the Afro-Cuban puppet opera Manita en el suelo, a tango version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Joaquín Orellana’s Efluvios y puntos. He has presented papers on baroque and contemporary music at congresses worldwide. Zubieta has taught music appreciation, American popular music, and hearing and analysis at Yale, music history at Universidad de Buenos Aires, and composition at Universidad Nacional de La Plata. He holds a doctorate in composition from Yale and a licentiate in musicology from Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires.

https://www.wqxr.org/people/sebastian-zubieta/

14:00
Stylianos Dimou

From Spatial Constructs to Electrified Resonance: Navigating the Hybrid Sonic Self

From Spatial Constructs to Electrified Resonance: Navigating the Hybrid Sonic Self delves into the profound transformation of artistic identity through the convergence of acoustic and electroacoustic elements. This presentation investigates how spatial constructs morph into electrified resonances, forging a hybrid sonic self that transcends traditional creative boundaries. Showcasing works like in dysto, the lecture uncovers the intricate role of technology in reshaping both the compositional process and the listening experience. By recontextualizing complexity within these frameworks, it offers a bold exploration of the evolving relationship between sound, space, and human-machine synergy in contemporary artistic expression.

Stylianos Dimou(1988) is Associate Professor for Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. Dr. Dimou works as a composer, conductor, accordionist, and electronic music improviser and his compositions have been featured at notable festivals such as IRCAM/manifeste, Gaudeamus Music Week, and the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, and performed by leading ensembles including Ensemble InterContemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Arditti Quartet. Dimou’s academic and artistic pursuits have been supported by prominent organizations including the Fulbright Program, Ulysses Network, and the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. He holds advanced degrees from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Eastman School of Music, and Columbia University, and completed the prestigious Cursus program at IRCAM in Paris. His research and artistic practice delve into the interplay between human performers and technological systems, with a focus on sonic hybridity, spatial immersion, and the integration of interactive sound systems, digital signal processing, and multichannel audio. Dimou’s notable accolades include the Ulysses Network / IRCAM Award for Artistic Excellence and several international composition prizes.

https://www.wqxr.org/people/sebastian-zubieta/