Simon Steen-Andersen
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Deadly Serious Play at Louisiana
Simon Steen-Andersen, Håkon Stene, Tanja Orning: »Nye klange på Louisiana – Portrætkoncert med Simon Steen Andersen«
© Camilla Stephan
New Sounds at Louisiana is an initiative in which the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art has invited the record label Dacapo and the music publisher Edition S to curate concerts featuring living composers. Simon Steen-Andersen was the first composer in the series, and he seized the opportunity to assemble a programme that was not only overwhelming and exhilarating, but also deeply unsettling. Lasting an hour, the concert unfolded as a continuous sequence in which each work flowed seamlessly into the next, forming a single extended statement of at least part of the composer’s artistic practice and philosophy.
Combining video and live performance, the concert served as a manifestation of several of Steen-Andersen’s key artistic strategies. Central among them are techniques of estrangement and defamiliarisation, exemplified by Asthma (2017) for accordion, air pumps, and video, a work that explores and interrogates human breathing in all its positive and negative dimensions. Amid the many grotesque and humorous scenes – accompanied by Håkon Stene’s brilliant Foley-style soundtrack of air noises, sound effects, and spoken commentary – a brief clip of brutal police violence suddenly appears. In it, an officer methodically sprays pepper spray into the faces of handcuffed demonstrators. In that instant, everything else no longer seems quite so funny, and the crooked smile freezes.
The concert was a veritable sensory bombardment. Presenting all the works attacca undoubtedly created a powerful sense of flow, but it also left the audience almost saturated with impressions. Even so, the subsequent conversation between Simon Steen-Andersen and music critic and author Thomas Michelsen felt far too brief. Yet the composer succeeded in making his point: everything he does, he said, is a form of »deadly serious play.« Exactly.
© Malthe Folke Ivarsson
»In his music, composer Allan Gravgaard Madsen tries to create a better version of himself.«
Allan Gravgaard Madsen is a Danish composer based in Copenhagen. His most recent works include Träume nicht and Nachtmusik. He tries to create a better version of himself in his music – where his personality tends to be restless, chatty and has an active inner life, his music is controlled, simple and merciless in its expression. He is the recipient of the Carl Nielsen & Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Hæderspris 2022.
Finnish Space Travel
Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
© Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
The Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén has, with the album Hoshi, released under the solo moniker Tomutonttu, created a true little star. Not only because »hoshi« literally means »star« in Japanese, but above all due to the music itself. There is something cosmic, yet infinitely minute, about the sonic worlds Anderzén conjures—like a galaxy reflected in a puddle, or a space journey in a rocket carved from a hollow tree trunk. Synths emit busy, warm blips and bloops, while ultra-short vocal and instrumental samples create a recognizable blur. At once artificial and organic – soft, rounded, jagged, crackling.
Anderzén approaches sound with a playfulness I simply adore. His music is strange in an incredibly comforting way. It places me in a kind of colorful, trance-like state, only interrupted when, several times over the course of the album, I find myself smiling in delight at a particularly great sound. The synths on »Katse osuu sähköön!« The choral samples on »Kesä oli äkkiä ohi!« Milo Linnovaara’s flute on »Malta lausua ‘AH’!« And many more. Hoshi is an album packed with microscopic moments that together form a frayed, exploding, radiant, idiosyncratic whole—a stellar moment of just under 38 minutes.