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Press Release from Borealis - a festival for experimental music, in Bergen, Norway
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Radikálne melódie, živelné improvizácie
Radical Melodies, Spontaneous Improvisation

Borealis - a festival for experimental music, in Bergen, Norway is excited to announce a fresh partnership with the NEXT festival in Bratislava, Slovakia, creating new projects to bring adventurous musicians together from Slovakia, Norway and beyond. The two festivals will collaborate on three projects that bring together their shared interests in creating spaces for artists to make new work, negotiating the built environment and exploring the intersection of technology and improvisation.
Drums is a new commissioned piece that explores the outer limits of the drum kit, bringing together four diverse voices in international drumming, and four piles of drums. Michaela Antalová from Slovakia, Chris Corsano from the USA, Anja Jacobsen from Denmark and Øyvind Skarbø from Norway will spend a week together in Slovakia this November developing a brand new work that is rooted in their individual approaches to drumming but will push the limits of collective drum performance. With time to compose together, the work will represent both the affinities in their approach, and also the tensions that emerge from this process.
Threnoscope is a spatialised microtonal drone instrument, developed by composer and live-coder Thor Magnusson, for use in improvised performances. Based on extended ideas of tuning systems, spectralism, scales, and drone music, alongside projections the instrument visualises shifting blocks of complex microtonal sound. Thor Magnusson and his Threnoscope will be joined in performance by Icelandic author Bergsveinn Birgisson, (whose performance practice investigates the citing and chanting of Old Norse text), as well as improvisers from Norway and Slovakia.
Slovakian field recordist and sound enthusiast Jonáš Gruska will be bringing his inventive instruments to Bergen for a special site-specific installation and workshop. Delving in to the electromagnetic spectrum and vibrating the physical world around him, Gruska’s work has a great sensitivity to environmental sound, and through his practice as an instrument builder, builds new machines to allow him to uncover hidden sounds around us. As well as a work that through transducers engages the physical environment of the city, he will hold a workshop at the Bergen Public Library, where participants can build their own electromagnetic listening device. 

“The NEXT festival has long been an exciting showcase for the kinds of music that Borealis celebrates, so we’re thrilled to be a part of the Fresh Air project, bringing together Norwegian and Slovakian audiences and artists for performances that will feature at both festivals.” - Artistic Director of Borealis, Peter Meanwell 

For more information, photographs or interviews with the artists or the festival,
contact Irem Müftüoglu on irem@borealisfestival.no or +4741649181

Notes to Editors:

‘Fresh Air: Current tendencies in music, cinema, theatre and media art’ is a collaboration with A4 and NEXT festival in Bratislava, and supported by EEA Grants and the Government Budget of the Slovak Republic.

Borealis - a Festival for Experimental Music runs from 8-12 March 2017, across venues in the city of Bergen, Norway and includes music from the worlds of new composed music and improv, and artists who use sound. The full festival programme will be announced in early 2017. www.borealisfestival.no

The Next Festival of exploratory music runs from 22-26 November 2016 in Bratislava, Slovakia, and features electronic experiments to free-form improvisation and audiovisual projects, bringing together musicians that are pushing the boundaries of music. http://2016.nextfestival.sk/






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Borealis – en festival for eksperimentell musikk · Strandgaten 207 · Bergen, 5004 · Norway