In brieflive

Cortini – the Electronic John Williams

Alessandro Cortini

Alessandro Cortini is best known as a member of Nine Inch Nails, and as I discreetly listened in on conversations before the concert, it was clear that several people had shown up because of the connection to the famous band and its noisy, confrontational music – music that is worlds apart from the feather-light ambient universe that characterises most of Cortini’s solo work.

At ALICE, however, we were presented with a very different side of Cortini: Cortini the film composer. The artist was positioned far out at the edge of the stage, where he could tinker with his synthesizers in peace without stealing attention from the film projected onto the back wall of the stage. Contrasting, tactile images slowly sliding into and out of one another. Abstract, amorphous shapes that at times resembled misty memories from the real world: raindrops on a car window, a city seen from above, stars in the night sky; tar, metal shavings, crushed crystal.

Cortini reminded me of a kind of electronic John Williams, enveloping the images in an unusually grand, almost symphonic universe that elevated the black-and-white light forms into hieroglyphs of infinite wisdom. The atmosphere was so sacral and gripping that, with closed eyes, one could easily forget that Cortini was not singing Michelangelo’s paintings from behind the organ in the Sistine Chapel, but instead setting analogue synth tones to what looked like an image of a granite block. Some of the Nine Inch Nails fans, I could hear, were slightly confused by the emotionally charged, almost romantic aesthetic, but I myself truly admired Cortini for his uncompromising maximalism. There was no affected distance or feigned coolness – only pure, unadulterated musical beauty.

Playlist

03.11

My name is Sophia Sagaradze – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music and sound for me is a language, the most present and fleeting one. It’s something that passes through your heart and becomes the past in a second. Music amplifies every emotion, love, happiness, anger, sadness a thousand times over, making me feel everything more deeply and sensitively.«

Sophia Sagaradze is a sound artist, composer, and performer from Georgia, based in Denmark. She experiments with space, multichannel electronics and audio-visual installations. Sagaradze is interested in creating works that explore the boundary between external and internal experiences of space. She holds a bachelor’s degree in classical composition from Tbilisi State Conservatory and a master’s degree in electronic composition from DIEM Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg. In 2022, she received the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Foundation’s Talent Award in Composition. Sagaradze has performed in several countries, received commissioned works for ensembles, performed live and created audio-visual installations. She is a founder and artistic director of Aarhus Sound Association (Aarhus Lydforening), Project leader at ROSA and a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg.

Playlist

02.11

We are Girls in Airports – would you like to see our playlist?

»Like all art, music is a language for emotions, dreams, and the search for meaning—but for us it is just as crucial that music is a path to community.«

Girls in Airports is a Danish instrumental band with a palette that draws in particular on jazz, electronic music, and sounds from distant horizons. Since their debut album in 2010, they have created a sonic universe in which saxophones, synths, and pulsating grooves meet in a collective and dreamlike expression. Recently, the band has focused on artistic collaborations with, among others, Teitur and Aarhus Jazz Orchestra, and they are now on their way with a new album created in collaboration with the string trio Halvcirkel.

Playlist

30.10

My name is Steen Andersen – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music, to me, is the lifeline to the world that more than anything else creates emotional resonance and fills my head with confetti of thought.«

Steen Andersen is a cultural entrepreneur, festival manager, and writer. He is a co-founder of Lost Farm Festival and has coordinated projects such as Copenhagen and Odden Sauna Festival, the collective workspace PB43, the cultural venue BYGN 5, and Prags Have. Over the years, he has written books and articles on urban activism, entrepreneurship, and culture, including Byen bliver til and Learning from Sierra Leone together with Architects Without Borders, which won the Danish Architectural Association’s Initiative Award. He is currently based in Ukraine, where he is coordinating Lost Farm Festival’s Art Exchange Program, and has just curated the exhibition HIDE and SEEK with young Ukrainian artists in Kyiv.

In brieflive

29.10

Islands Of Sound Rising From the Sea

Athelas Sinfonietta: »Nordic Sounds«

Nordatlantens Brygge, 25.10

Andrew Mellor

Veroníque Vaka’s ongoing project to pin some of earth’s most momentous geological processes down in notated music is proving beguiling. The latest fruit was premiered on Saturday at Nordatlantens Brygge. Eyland (»Island«) was inspired by the formation of the island of Surtsey, which appeared 33km of Iceland’s coast on 14 November 1963 following a volcanic eruption.

Much of the Canadian-Icelandic composer’s work charts decline; its musical movement tracing harvested data around ecological destruction and decay. Eyland is about creation, and Vaka seemed to revel in the wonder and grandeur of it. The 15-strong Athelas Sinfonietta sounded with the sweep of a symphony orchestra under Bjarni Frímann and Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson’s solo accordion like the emergent island itself, edging up from the spray with magnificent, slow force.

Some of the other five pieces in this concert focusing on music of the North Atlantic could feel like a ritualistic preparation for Vaka’s – a testament to the composers’ focus more than their lack of weight. Around the clear long lines of Eli Tausen a Láva’s Álvan are distinctive North Atlantic sparkle and harmonic depth; Daníel Bjarnason’s Skelja is a miniature sonic romance between harp and percussion and Friðrik Margrétar-Guðmundsson's Fikta a smudged chorale, played with shamanistic intensity by Ásgeirsson. Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Entropic Arrows focused the mind with its threading of long string tendrils from out of frantic wind and percussion action.

The other premiere was Aya Yoshida’s Song of the Voice – a non-vocal echo of the Faroese song tradition for cello and ensemble in which, at one point, you hear a chain-dance ratcheting round. The work is not without some imagination and effectiveness, but it was made to sound incoherent and unfocused by what surrounded it here.

In brieflive

29.10

What Do the Mad Want With an Opera House?

OperaHole: »screen (mad scenes)«

The Lab Cph, 25.10

Sune Anderberg

Denmark is lacking opera houses, a recent call in Politiken declared. And indeed: with only a single major, rather conservative opera house, we don’t quite make our mark on the grand stage. On the other hand, we can boast a flourishing opera life on the stages outside the established institutions. And with the Copenhagen music collective OperaHole, a new player has now entered the field.

Last week, the two singers and artistic directors Litha Ashforth and Daniel Rosenberg, both raised in the United States, presented OperaHole’s first production: a kind of surprise egg consisting of Rosenberg’s own character study recursion for two actors, the mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Peter Maxwell Davies’ 8 Songs for a Mad King – all three performed in one continuous flow in a white commercial film studio.

What was interesting, of course, was the juxtaposition of a short play, a classical scene, and one of the most abrasive monodramas of the last 60 years. The thematic common denominator was madness: Rosenberg, a so-called spieltenor with a wide range and comic talent, first skewered devilish variations of latte-drinking Copenhageners in his play, before coloratura soprano Ashforth slipped in wearing a white chemise soaked in blood and sang Donizetti with nimble desperation and a soft sweetness, accompanied by flute and piano.

Finally came the monodrama with Rosenberg as the mad king, staged as a social-media workshop in which the performance was commented on in a livestream (LeaHan1997: »Not this again«!) and screenshots were pasted together into memes in real time. It was spirited – musically as well – but insular, and the work itself disappeared in the process.

Once the collective’s youthful enthusiasm for new media has settled, OperaHole nevertheless looks like a strong contender to carry on our tradition of playful underground opera.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek