I’m thinking I could talk about how I got into creative music considering that I have an education as a classical pianist.
I wasn’t listening to experimental music when I was 5 years old. I wasn’t that kind of child.
But music has always had a big influence on me, since I was very young.
I think my first proper musical experience was probably when I was in a church for Julotta. That’s where you go to church very early in the morning after Christmas Eve. The cantor played an organ piece that was just a massive experience.
I thought it was really, really incredible. So it was a sort of influence, or it made a big impression.
And I listened to music a lot when I was young. But after my education, I left the music scene because I had a child.
I thought that I just wanted to be a mother. [laughing] It’s true.
Maybe this sounds really pathetic… [laughing]
After studying I had my first child and that’s how it’s been throughout my career that I had a child and then I left the scene, came back, then I had another child, and it’s like starting over all the time
But during a particular period, I got very curious about what was happening at Fylkingen this was a place that I knew about, but hadn’t been directly involved with. I did something there in the early, stumbling years of my career but – then it was like I went there and listened to almost anything as soon as I had some spare time after my kids went to sleep so it could be on a Wednesday or a Thursday.
So in this way one got exposed to the music and it could be anything from electronic music to performance art, arrangements by members, or productions by Fylkingen.
So it was a very ‘mixed bag’ so to speak. But it also means that I got some kind of inspiration and a sort of platform for trying to formulate and articulate what I wanted to do myself.
Even though it was quite far away from what I was listening to there. Because I was more into, how to say, contemporary music, experimental jazz and improvisation.
But this probably meant quite a lot to me, or it did mean a lot to me. To have, as a musician and composer, the possibility of trying things out before anything is finalised
and maybe not even knowing where it will land, or what the final product, or end result will be. And there I could see that Fylkingen was this kind of a place, where one could present things that weren’t finished, because I had seen many productions like this myself, and it was also a way to while spending time in such an environment, one also becomes…
I also became inspired to keep investigating my own work and also to be able to present things there which weren’t entirely finished.
Also, at that time, I didn’t have an instrument at home so I could also be there and practice. And this was of course a huge and important thing as a pianist, to get the opportunity to play on a grand piano. And this also meant that I could spend time there… to sit there playing, working, and meeting other artists and musicians informally in this way. So absolutely
I think that all the music I make is constantly sort of in development at least I hope so in any case …and that it isn’t finished in any way even if one decides to maybe make a record or something it is a continuous, eternal process of testing one’s way forward. Sometimes it can be very frustrating to just want to be finished with certain things and leave it. At the same time, it can also be quite comforting that it never becomes finished in some way but rather that one gets periods of continuing to explore and try things that one is thinking around and how to resolve them in a musical way.
Where to watch: — fonstret.bandcamp.com (100 SEK) — cafeoto.co.uk (£8 or free for OTO members) — vimeo below (password sent via email to Fifth Edition Festival ticket holders and Fylkingen members)
When the Fifth Edition Festival for Other Music was postponed (again!) to August 2022 it felt necessary to do something on the original dates anyway but with only local people… it messes up the sequential festival numbering system, so here we have ‘out of order’ — an interstitial, online edition festival for other music. We’ll be simulcasting the programme to Bandcamp, Cafe OTO and Fylkingen. It will be free to view for OTO and Fylkingen members and Fifth Edition Festival ticket holders (via password sent in advance via email).
Out of Order will present five concerts interspersed with three short ‘fönstret’ films starring Lisa Ullén, Leif Elggren and Raymond Strid.
Concert films:
Magnus Granberg Ensemble
Josefin Runsteen — violin, My Hellgren — cello, Finn Loxbo — guitar, Ryan Packard — percussion, John Eriksson — vibraphone & percussion Anna Christensson — piano.
A new sextet performing a new work — Night Will Fade and Fall Apart — by Magnus Granberg. The piece takes two different songs by the late medieval composer Solage as well as the jazz standard My Foolish Heart as its points of departure. This performance is produced in collaboration with Thanatosis Production.
Elsa Bergman / Finn Loxbo / Ryan Packard— Electric Trio
Premiere public appearance of the riotous ‘electric’ trio of Elsa Bergman (electric bass), Finn Loxbo (electric guitar) and Ryan Packard (drums & electronics), recorded in tight confines at the group’s rehearsal space in Vasastan.
Soft Tissue
Soft Tissue is the Stockholm-via-Glasgow duo of Feronia Wennborg and Simon Weins. Their latest LP arrives imminently via Students of Decay.
Fylkingen mainstays WOL — the duo of Wenche Tankred and Lovisa Johansson present new work outside of category.
Vilhelm Bromander Aurora Ensemble
Vilhelm Bromander – soprano saxophone, Isabel Gustafsson-Ny — pump organ & piano, Gustav Rådström – clarinet, Mauritz Agnas – clarinet & double bass, Emma Augustsson – cello, Pelle Westlin – soprano saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, Anton Svanberg – tuba.
Erstwhile contrabassist and composer Vilhelm Bromander (here on soprano saxophone!) assembles a special group to perform works from his recent release Aurora.
The Edition Festival is supported by Stockholm City, Region Stockholm and Kulturrådet, The Swedish Arts Council and produced by John Chantler for Ideell Edition.
Over the five nights we will present NINE pieces by Eliane Radigue (who turned 90 in January) including a brand new work for quintet — OCCAM HEXA IV — commissioned by the festival. We are thrilled to be presenting more of her music again after the extraordinary Occam Ocean for concert for orchestra in 2017. Big thanks to Silvia Tarozzi, Julia Eckhardt, Deborah Walker, Nate Wooley and Enrico Malatesta and of course Eliane for being up for this. This will open each night.
أحمد [Ahmed] — The quartet of Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright, Joel Grip and Antonin Gerbal — will play the closing set ALL FIVE NIGHTS. These kind of multi-night runs are all too rare these days and I can’t think of a group who could do more to imagine the possibilities of this opportunity than [Ahmed].
For the first two nights of the festival, we are collaborating with Thanatosis Produktion to present new work by Magnus Granberg — ‘Night Will Fade and Fall Apart’ — for the new Tya Ensemble with Josefin Runsteen, My Hellgren, Finn Loxbo, Ryan Packard, John Eriksson and Anna Christensson. This will be played in both its full ensemble version (wednesday) and in smaller, solo/duo/trio formations (thursday).
The next two nights will host solo vocal performances by Sofia Jernberg (friday) and Pär Thörn (saturday) and on sunday we welcome Fylkingen mainstays WOL (Wenche Tankred and Lovisa Johansson) for something uncategorisable (and as yet unknown).
PROGRAMME
WEDNESDAY 10 AUGUST 2022
Eliane Radigue — Occam River VIII. [world premiere] for violin and percussion, performed by Silvia Tarozzi & Enrico Malatesta Eliane Radigue — Occam X. for trumpet, performed by Nate Wooley
Magnus Granberg — Night Will Fade And Fall Apart [world premiere] for sextet, performed by Tya Ensemble: Josefin Runsteen (violin), My Hellgren (cello), Finn Loxbo (guitar), Anna Christensson (piano), John Eriksson (vibraphone and percussion) and Ryan Packard (percussion).
أحمد [ahmed] — Pat Thomas, piano; Seymour Wright, Alto Saxophone; Joel Grip, Double Bass; Antonin Gerbal, Drums
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THURSDAY 11 AUGUST 2022
Eliane Radigue — Occam VIII for cello, performed by Deborah Walker Eliane Radigue — Occam River XXVI for viola and trumpet, performed by Julia Eckhardt & Nate Wooley
Magnus Granberg — Night Will Fade And Fall Apart for soloists & small groups, performed by Tya Ensemble: Josefin Runsteen (violin), My Hellgren (cello), Finn Loxbo (guitar), Anna Christensson (piano), John Eriksson (vibraphone and percussion) and Ryan Packard (percussion).
أحمد [ahmed] — Pat Thomas, piano; Seymour Wright, Alto Saxophone; Joel Grip, Double Bass; Antonin Gerbal, Drums.
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FRIDAY 12 AUGUST 2022
Eliane Radigue — Occam River II for violin and cello, performed by Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker Eliane Radigue — Occam River XXV for viola and percussion, performed by Julia Eckhardt & Enrico Malatesta
Sofia Jernberg — Solo
أحمد [ahmed] — Pat Thomas, piano; Seymour Wright, Alto Saxophone; Joel Grip, Double Bass; Antonin Gerbal, Drums.
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SATURDAY 13 AUGUST 2022
Eliane Radigue — OCCAM HEXA V [premiere] for violin, viola, cello, trumpet and percussion, performed by Silvia Tarozzi, Julia Eckhardt, Deborah Walker, Nate Wooley and Enrico Malatesta
Pär Thörn — Solo
أحمد [ahmed] — Pat Thomas, piano; Seymour Wright, Alto Saxophone; Joel Grip, Double Bass; Antonin Gerbal, Drums.
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SUNDAY 14 AUGUST 2022
Eliane Radigue — Occam XXVI for percussion, performed by Enrico Malatesta Eliane Radigue — Occam Delta III for violin, viola and cello, performed by Silvia Tarozzi, Julia Eckhardt & Deborah Walker
WOL — Wenche Tankred & Lovisa Johansson
أحمد [ahmed] — Pat Thomas, piano; Seymour Wright, Alto Saxophone; Joel Grip, Double Bass; Antonin Gerbal, Drums.
Éliane Radigue is one of the last centuries’ most important living composers. Having produced an extraordinary and extraordinarily influential body of electronic music between the 1960s up until 2002 (despite very little public acclaim or recognition during most of this period), she then turned to composing for and with musicians and acoustic instruments. In doing so, she has created a further body of music that draws on the sonority of her earlier work whilst extending it into new realms using a very particular methodology of oral transmission that allows for exchange ‘heart-to-heart’.
For Radigue, we humans remain limited to an extremely restricted zone compared to the infinity of the universe and this is the spirit of the work: the vertiginous nature of the inconceivable.
Occam Hexa IV has been commissioned with the support of Kulturrådet.
JULIA ECKHARDT
Julia Eckhardt is a musician and organiser in the field of the sonic arts. She is a founding member and artistic co-director of Q-O2 workspace in Brussels, for which she conceptualized various thematic research projects. As a performer of composed and improvised music she has collaborated with numerous artists, and extensively with Éliane Radigue. She has performed internationally, and released a number of recordings. She has been lecturing about topics such as sound, gender and public space, and is (co-)author of The Second Sound, conversation on gender and music, Grounds for Possible Music, The Middle Matter – sound as interstice, and Éliane Radigue – Intermediary Spaces/Espaces intermédiaires.
Silvia is a violinist, composer and improviser. The oral transmission of music and the form created through a deep immersion into the sound are traits of her musical research and find expression in several collaborations with composers as Éliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Pascale Criton, Cassandra Miller, Martin Arnold, Pierre-Yves Macé, Philip Corner. Her projects are released by I dischi di Angelica, Unseen Worlds, New World Records, Potlatch. Her concerts have been recorded and broadcasted by BBC Radio and France Musique. She performs regularly in festivals and venues in Europe, North America, Canada, Mexico.
Nate Wooley grew up in Clatskanie, Oregon. He began his professional music career at age 13 performing in big bands with his father, and studied jazz and classical trumpet at the University of Oregon and University of Denver. He settled in New York in 2001, and maintains an active schedule working in contemporary classical, jazz, noise, and electronic music as an interpreter, improviser, and composer. While a large part of his work has consisted of solo improvisation and composition, he has collaborated with Anthony Braxton, Éliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Yoshi Wada, Christian Wolff, Wadada Leo Smith, and others.
He is the founder of the For / With Festival, which commissions and premieres works created through collaboration between composer and performer, all with an emphasis on radical timbral techniques and improvisation within composition.
Wooley is also the editor of Sound American, an online journal intended to demystify contemporary experimental music with the intention of expanding and perpetuating a base audience for the radical and avant-garde. He is currently the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM) and teaches at The New School for Social Research.
Deborah Walker is a new music performer and improviser based in Paris. She was born in Reggio Emilia (Italy) in 1981 and studied cello in her hometown. After graduating she moved to Paris to continue her cello studies with Agnès Vesterman and Anssi Karttunen. Since 2007 she has been a member of Dedalus, a variable experimental and contemporary music ensemble, which has collaborated, among others, with Tom Johnson, Pascale Criton, Christian Wolff, Antoine Beuger and Jurg Frey. Deborah Walker has worked with artists like Joëlle Leandre, Markus Stockhausen, Garrett List and Philip Corner. She’s currently working with the composers Pascale Criton and Eliane Radigue on pieces for solo cello. She has played in many festivals such as I Suoni delle Dolomiti, Italia Wave, ZKN in Karlsruhe, Festival d’Avignon, Festival Nomad in M’Hamid (Morocco), Switch ON (Malaysia) and tours regularly in Europe.
ENRICO MALATESTA
Enrico Malatesta is an Italian percussionist, sound researcher and curator active in the field of experimental music, sound intervention and performance; his practice explores the relations between sound, space and body, the vitality of materials and the morphology of surfaces, with particular attention to the percussive acts and the modes of listenings.
Since 2007 Enrico Malatesta has been presenting his works with tours all over Europe, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, UK, North America and Russia, participating in festivals and special events in venues such as Pirelli Hangar Bicocca – Milano, Berghain – Berlin, MAM – Rio de Janeiro.
[Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. The group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive music where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.
Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic and East African thought, ethics, meanings and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for new ground. Melodies respirate, swell, escalate and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is accomplished, but ultimately just foot-to-the-floor swings.
SEYMOUR WRIGHT
Seymour Wright’s work is about the creative, situated friction of learning, ideas, people and the saxophone – music, history and technique – actual and potential.
His solo work is documented on three widely-acclaimed collections – Seymour Wright of Derby (2008), Seymour Writes Back (2015) and Is This Right? (2017).
Current projects include: abaria with Ute Kanngiesser; [Ahmed] with Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Pat Thomas; @xcrswx with Crystabel Riley; GUO with Daniel Blumberg; The Experimental Library with Evie Ward; XT with Paul Abbott; a trans-atlantic duet with Anne Guthrie, and, with Jean-luc Guionnet a project addressing an imaginary lacunae in Aby Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne.
His writing has been published in C//A, Sound American and The Wire.
For a number of years now, energetic double bassist, filmmaker and producer Grip has played an important role for the new scenes of improvised music in Europe. As founder of Umlaut Records, he opened up for creative forms of organizing collectives of musicians and promoting their music internationally. Since 2003 he has been one of the main organizers of Hagenfesten in Dala-Floda, Sweden, a stand-alone festival, and quite frankly possibly the most pleasant venue for free improvised music not only in Sweden but in the whole of Europe. Few other places offer quite the same endearing combination of sophisticated musical risk-taking, and up-beat, social get-together. Grip’s musicianship is informed by a similar knack for welding musical sophistication with social communication, often with an analog film camera at hand. With a handful of short films Joel Grip met mexican filmmaker Mauricio Hernández and shortly the film production company Umlicht was established. They are right now working on their second feature film together.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style — embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
“Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude.” – The Jazzmann
ANTONIN GERBAL
Antonin Gerbal is a percussion player, improviser and composer, active in the field of contemporary musics – from jazz to non-idiomatic languages. He has studied music at Paris Conservatory and philosophy at EHESS. In 2009 he co-founded Umlaut France, an organization which runs the eponymous label and organizes concerts and festivals in Paris and Berlin. Antonin Gerbal is mainly using percussion elements to develop multiple accesses to musical languages in jazz, improvised or written music. He has collaborated with many international artists and played in United States, Japan, Russia and Europe.
Magnus Granberg is a composer and performer living in Stockholm, Sweden. Born in Umeå in 1974, he studied saxophone and improvisation at the University of Gothenburg and in New York in his late teens and early to mid twenties. Self-taught as a composer, he formed his own ensemble Skogen in 2005 trying to integrate experiences, methods and materials from various traditions of improvised and composed musics into a new modus operandi. Apart from the ongoing work with Skogen he is increasingly writing music on commission for different ensembles and projects. Recent work includes pieces for the ensembles Ordinary Affects, Ensemble Grizzana and Insub Meta Orchestra which have been performed at festivals and venues in Europe, Japan and the USA. Granberg’s work has mainly been published by the British record label Another Timbre with occasional releases on record labels such as Ftarri and Insub.
NIGHT WILL FADE AND FALL APART
Tya Ensemble perform Night Will Fade And Fall Apart
“In early 2021 pianist and producer Alex Zethson asked me if I would be interested in writing some music for a hand-picked ensemble of his choosing, consisting of musicians active within various strands of contemporary musics. I was of course as honored as I was excited to get such a wonderful opportunity to get to know and work with musicians I for the most part did not know personally or had had the opportunity to work with before. So I suggested this old idea of mine to write a large piece for chamber ensemble with a variable and flexible structure where the different parts also could be performed as solo pieces as well as be combined in different ways so as to form smaller ensemble pieces of varying durations.
The piece, which is called Night Will Fade and Fall Apart, takes as its points of departure two different songs by French, late medieval composer Solage (Tres gentil cuer and En l’amoureux vergier) as well as from the popular song and jazz standard My Foolish Heart by Victor Young and Ned Washington, from whose lyrics the piece also borrows its title, albeit in a slightly transformed manner.
The Tya Ensemble consists of Josefin Runsteen (violin), My Hellgren (cello), Finn Loxbo (guitar), Anna Christensson (piano), John Eriksson (vibraphone and percussion) and Ryan Packard (percussion).”
Sofia Jernberg is a Swedish experimental singer, composer, improviser and performer, born in Ethiopia 1983. She grew up in Ethiopia, Vietnam and Sweden.
One of her deepest interests as a singer is to explore the “instrumental” possibilities of the voice. Her singing vocabulary includes sounds and techniques that often contradict a conventional singing style. She has dug deep into non verbal vocalizing, split tone singing, pitchless and distorted singing.
As a composer she has been commissioned by Barents composer orchestra, Swedish Radio P2, Stockholm Jazz Festival, Trondheim jazz orchestra, vocal ensemble Oslo 14, Klang – Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival, BANFF – Center for arts and creativity, The Gothenburg Combo, Opera Nord, MaerzMusikk, Ultima Contemporary Music Festival and various chamber ensembles and is currently working on a piece (commissioned by Ultima Contemporary Music Festival) for children’s choir, soprano, voice and chamber ensemble that will be premiered at Ultima in 2022.
Jernberg is a member of Fire! Orchestra and The End (with Kjetil Møster, Mats Gustafsson, Anders Hana and Greg Saunier) and regularly performs in duo with Mette Rasmussen and Alexander Hawkins among other collaborations.
Pär Thörn
PÄR THÖRN
Pär Thörn (född 1977) är författare, ljudkonstnär och fanzineredaktör, bosatt i Göteborg. Sedan debuten 2002 har han givit ut närmare tjugo böcker och blivit översatt till bland annat danska och franska. Thörn har även framträtt med uppläsningar och elektronisk musik på scener i Sverige, Europa, Mexiko och Vietnam. Just nu är han aktuell med prosaboken ”Era anklagelser är meningslösa”. Förra året utkom två CD-skivor i samarbete med Ian Douglas-Moore och Tobias Kirstein på skivbolagen Firework Edition Records, respektive Topos Media. Under ett flertal år i början av 2010-talet var Thörn verksam i Berlin och spelade regelbundet improvisationsmusik med bland andra Axel Dörner, Anaïs Tuerlinckx och Ignaz Schick. Hans primära projekt, för tillfället, är industrimusikduon Unaussprechlichen Kulten tillsammans med Jean Fatal.
På festivalen kommer Thörn framföra ett verk som blandar ljudpoesi, konkreta ljud och sinustoner.
WOL
WOL
WOL is the duo of Wenche Tankred and Lovisa Johansson. WOL is a continous artistic process that has been going on since 2007. The process manifest itself in the intersection between performance and sound art. WOL works visual and playful, often with a humorous tone. Our purpose is to expand the space for ourselves and the audience – to give more oxygen! WOL has performed at Counterflows festival in Glasgow, Colour out of space festival in Brighton, Galeria Raczej in Poznan, Performance Art Oslo, Moderna Museet, Bildmuseet and other places.
Due to the ongoing uncertainty related to COVID-19 we have decided to cancel the Edition Festival originally scheduled for 6—8. August 2020. We hope to be able to reschedule for the same period in 2021. Let’s see.
Stay safe out there.
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NB! We have a zero tolerance policy towards racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or any other hateful behavior.
Listen online
20:30, 19 February 2019
(archived and available worldwide for 30 days)
“The Tri-centric project ensemble består av tio svenska och sex amerikanska musiker, varav de senare kommer från Anthony Braxtons oktett. I början av februari samlades de i Stockholm för att under fyra dagar ta sig an musik av just den legendariske saxofonisten och kompositören Anthony Braxton.
Vi ska nu få höra resultatet. Från den fjärde upplagan av Edition festival i före detta Skeppsholmskyrkan – den vackra byggnad som numera heter Eric Ericssonhallen.
Kyoko Kitamura och Sofia Jernberg, röst, Lisa Ullén, piano, Erica Dicker, violin, Tomeka Reid, cello, Finn Loxbo, gitarr, Elsa Bergman och Ville Bromander, kontrabas, Carl Testa, kontrabas och elektronik, Susana Santos Silva, trumpet, Ingrid Laubrock, tenorsaxofon, Isak Hedtjärn, klarinett, Johan Arrias, saxofon och klarinett, Dan Peck, tuba, Erik Carlsson, slagverk, och Mattias Stahl, vibrafon.
Konsert 8/2 2019, Eric Ericssonhallen, Stockholm.”
On Friday 10th of February, Olivia Block and Sarah Hennies will be giving a free public talk about their respective work/practice at Kungliga Musikhögskolan (KMH) between 1—3pm in room 1E207.
For new visitors to KMH, take the main entrance and walk all the way through the foyer, past the restaurant and then turn right…
