11:00-12:00
The Microtonal Piano
Sanae Yoshida
Norwegian Academy of Music (3rd year presentation)
Moderator: Petter Frost Fadnes
12:15-13:15
Back out of the gramophone
Ingeborg Dalheim
Norwegian Academy of Music (2nd year presentation)
Cancelled
14:30-15:30
The Shared Space - Composing Us
Sergej Tchirkov
University of Bergen (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Petter Frost Fadnes
15:45-16:45
Ars Memoriae - The Art to Remember
Maarten Vanden Eynde
University of Bergen (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Petter Frost Fadnes
19:00-20:00
Opening Session - Eikenes-salen
- Akiho – Umi; Bastien Ricquebourg
- Welcome by Inger Stray Lien, the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, and Morten Wensberg, University of Stavanger
- Screaming Cow: Iselin Brogeland
- All Tomorrows Parties - post-pandemic dancing; Brynjar Åbel Bandlien
Moderator: Linda Lien, the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills
Sanae Yoshida: The Microtonal Piano
Norwegian Academy of Music
Through my project, I seek to demonstrate as a performer how microtonality can increase the expressive possibilities of the acoustic piano.
I define “microtonal piano” as a piano including intervals not found in the standard 12-tone equal temperament (12-TET), whether it requires de-tuning, string harmonics/preparations or other modes of playing.
One can find pianos in almost every corner of the world, and 12-TET - the tuning system of the modern mass-produced piano where all intervals are exactly the same - has already long since colonized the world of music. Even the music without any piano adopted the 12-TET, and has f.ex. changed the way we experience something as “out of tune” or not. A global uniform tuning system has clearly been very practical for musicians and the music insdustry, and only certain folk music traditions and historically informed performance practices of earlier classical music have resisted it, and kept or rediscovered this crucial facet of their musical identity.
There are many curious examples of folk music where its pitch characteristics (one may call it the “colour” or “mode”) have been lost when reduced to 12-TET and transcribed into a composition later becoming a classical masterpiece. Even within contemporary art music relatively few are challenging the 12-TET. Among most instruments, microtonality is indeed becoming common knowledge, but the piano still retains an unflexibility in this matter, something in which this project attempts to challenge.
The reflection part of the project also touches upon the listening aspect: How a deeper experience of listening to intonation/microtonality and timbre affects the pianist’s way of music-making.
Besides, it includes a curious ethical thought experiment reflecting on the concept of “minority”: The non-standardized microtonal piano in a world of the colonial 12-TET, as a far-sought yet possible parallel to the Japanese contemporary music pianist in a world of Western music tradition and academia.
Awareness concerning minority has become increasingly important to me as an artist over the last few years, as I have realized that this perhaps was one of the deeper driving forces throughout this project: Experiencing my own artistic voice and career growing much stronger and bolder, this project has probably always been about giving a voice to “the hidden or forgotten pitches and intervals between the keys”, so to speak.
Sanae Yoshida is an Oslo-based pianist working regularly with both contemporary and classical repertoire as a solo, chamber and ensemble musician. She has worked closely with several composers, and has premiered a large number of works at concerts and festivals across Europe and in Japan. Yoshida is a member of Ensemble Temporum and Ensemble Ernst, two Oslo-based ensembles of contemporary music. She has been a soloist with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
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Sergej Tchirkov: The Shared Space - Composing Us
University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design - The Grieg Academy - Department of Music
This presentation discusses how a specific artistic concept replaces my main methodology in course of my research. Initially, I was planning to use co-creative collaborations with composers as my method. I wanted to investigate the relationship between me and my instrument as it relates to the production of musical meaning within score-based music. My intention was to examine the notion of virtuosity in experimental music, using the results of these collaborations.
For the first public presentation of artistic outcomes of our collaboration with composer Francisco Corthey I designed a concept which I called “The Shared Space” – a model of artistic practice which encompasses the creative agencies of composer, performer, score, instrument, and the audience. However, as the result of the tragic circumstances which surrounded this performance and which affected my personal and artistic life, I revised this model and turned it into a method that would allow for awareness of site- and context-specificity in every performance.
My next co-creative work with composer Arnt Håkon Ånesen was driven by the awareness of The Shared Space and it focused on joint production of a score, that was based on a few draft papers designed by the composer as well as on my real-time performances of these drafts. We imitated situations, different moods, recorded our sessions, analyzed, discussed and agreed that rather than notating the music, we would use some notation techniques and text instructions for modelling possible situations, that emphasize mood, energy, site and attitude. We wanted to create possibilities for the emergence of musical meaning withing The Shared Space through our joint composition, entitled “Composing us”. In this sense our score can be seen as a set of suggestions on how to build this space. This co-creative practice however raises ethical questions regarding the authorship – it is not coincidence that I use the plural form “we” while referring to the score.
- The Shares Space Concept (1): https://kalvfestival.se/wp/konserter/fredag-21-00-konsert-sergej-tchirkov/
- The Shared Space Concept (2): https://kalvfestival.se/wp/konserter/lordag-14-00-konsert-sergej-tchirkov/
- Arnt Håkon Ånesen https://www.aaanesen.no/
- Francisco Corthey https://franciscocorthey.com/
- Francisco Corthey “estamos bien, pero tiemblo” (2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Zfwbb5W38
Sergej Tchirkov (*1980, St. Petersburg) is accordion performer, curator and researcher based in Bergen. His interest in new music has led him to numerous collaborations with composers, such as Pierluigi Billone, Hanna Eimermacher, José María Sánchez Verdú, Ivan Fedele, Tamara Friebel, Klaus Lang, Dmitri Kourliandski, Elena Rykova, Dieter Schnebel, Gérard Zinsstag, Ida Lunden, Sergej Newski, Thomas Kessler and more. Around 300 works for accordion have been premiered by Tchirkov. A regular guest musician of Collegium Novum Zürich, musicAeterna a.o. Sergej Tchirkov has also performed with leading European orchestras under Teodor Currentzis, Titus Engel, Wladimir Jurowski and Susanne Mälkki. Tchirkov has lectured at many universities of music in Zurich, Geneva, Lucerne, Oslo, Gothenburg, Astana, Kuopio. 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 currently works as a research fellow in artistic research at the University of Bergen, Department of Fine Arts, Music and Design, the Grieg Academy. His most recent curatorial and artistic activities include anti-war concerts in solidarity with Ukraine. See also www.tchirkov.eu
Maarten Vanden Eynde: Ars Memoriae - The Art to Remember
Line drawings are among the first manifestations of cognitive communication in early human behaviour. These visible traces form the beginning of a mnemonic revolution, expanding human brain capacity enormously by externalizing memory. The specific signification of most drawings and petroglyphs got lost along the way, but their graphic endurance trough time, even into the present day (think #), invites us to recognize its importance for human evolution in general. Starting with arguably the earliest example of an external memory device (a piece of ochre with cross-hatched traces that was found in the Blombos cave in South Africa), my research follows the evolution and role of abstract signs and symbols as communication technology to expand, transform and transmit knowledge and information.
Maarten Vanden Eynde graduated in 2000 from the free media department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL), participated in 2006 in the experimental MSA^ Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles (US) and finished a post graduate course in 2009 at HISK Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent (BE) where he is a regular guest tutor. Since 2020 he is a PhD candidate at the UiB / University of Bergen in Norway. His practice is embedded in long term research projects that focus on numerous subjects of social and political relevance such as post-industrialism, capitalism and ecology. His work is situated exactly on the borderline between the past and the future; sometimes looking forward to the future of yesterday, sometimes looking back to the history of tomorrow.
Akiho – Umi
Bastien Ricquebourg: In addition to being the head of the percussion department at the Faculty of Performing Arts, Bastien is since 2009 the co-principal percussionist and timpanist at Stavanger symphony orchestra. Over the last years, Bastien has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra player all over Europe, with National orchestras and in different festivals.
Screaming Cow
And then there is death...which one might not talk about so much.
Especially not how one experiences grief and bereavement.
What happens when you say goodbye? What is left?
The world doesn't stop, always in flux.
And here one still stands somehow... perhaps with your backpack on your shoulder before school starts, in front of the computer screen at work, or in the middle of town just waiting for the bus.
Just here. Just right here I will stand. I will dance.
Radiating out.
What is no longer. What is left. And the liminal space between.
