in brieflive

Vocal Desire Between Deadpan and Renaissance

Matias Vestergård, Johan Klint Sandberg, ÆTLA: »Sex in Concert«

Sune Anderberg. © Alexander Banck-Petersen

Eight people sit at their own office desks. One raises an elbow to their mouth and lets out a muffled groan into it; another starts lazily slapping their forearm; a third suddenly creaks like a worn-out spring mattress. But the young singers of ÆTLA don’t crack a smile – their deadpan is the main comic ingredient in Matias Vestergård’s Apollonian sketch show SEX in Concert.

They quickly move from a whore’s chorus to a Renaissance madrigal, the transition seamless, with the humor tagging along: an Italian word that sounds like »aquamarine« becomes »ah! kvamarin«, and in this way, 400-year-old works by Gesualdo and his like-minded peers are sprinkled with Vestergård’s salon-style wit. But the movement also goes the other way: Vestergård’s newly composed pieces are tastefully ornamented with moving voices and flirt with strict church modality.

The desks are constantly rearranged, the office workers shifting from tableau to tableau, while the task of writing lyrics into a Google Doc projected on a screen rotates among the singers: Amalie Smith, Marvin Gaye, outraged anti-capitalist critique, and cheerful chat language – everything tinged with desire, but above all with ambivalence toward desire. Everything flows, including Vestergård’s compositions, which in one moment test icy echo techniques, and in the next turn up the heat with perfectly crafted barbershop.

SEX in Concert is clearly an exercise, and as director, Johan Klint Sandberg has had a field day with the office comedy. But the exercise succeeds (even if the hands stay above the covers): before you know it, an hour has passed in which Vestergård, Sandberg, and ÆTLA have slipped poetry, madrigals, and new vocal music down the throat of a young audience. It can actually be quite fun!

Christianshavn Residents’ House, March 18–22

playlist

23.10

My name is C.Y. Frostholm – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music, to me, is true luxury and has always been an opening into a language without constricting categories, with room for both intimacy and impact. I don’t have a single tone in life, but I wish I did. When I work, music is a warm room I can barricade myself in, an ally that keeps me on track—not least in a time as destructive as the one we are in now. It can be a connection to difficult emotions, but also an excuse for a kitchen dance that makes me forget the world and myself. I actually constantly long for a new soundtrack (and more dancing), but if I’m completely honest, I’m also quite happy to take off the headphones and listen—not least to the non-human world’s differently calming compositions: all the other voices that we must include in the choir if there is to be human song and music in the future.«

C.Y. Frostholm (b. 1963) is a writer and visual artist who has published poetry and prose since 1985 and worked visually since 1991, including with photography, digital, and visual poetry. Together with composer Hans Sydow, he released the album Mellem stationerne back in 2000. Earlier this year, he took part in the exhibition Hybris! at Galleri Image in Aarhus, based on his latest book, Til den ven jeg aldrig har kendt (2023).

in brieflive

18.10

One Tone, Eight Breaths, and the Sound of Waiting

Elisa Kragerup, Louise Alenius, Vokalensemblet ÆTLA and others: »The Emperor of Portugalia«

Edison, Betty Nansen Teatret, 17.10–14.11

Henrik Marstal

Only one actor appears on stage in The Emperor of Portugalia – surrounded by eight singers. In Elisa Kragerup’s tightly choreographed staging, Louise Alenius’ a cappella composition becomes a physical experience where breath and movement merge into one. The acoustic soundscape interacts eerily quietly with the deafening, mechanical noises that arise when, for instance, beams of light are raised and lowered on stage. It feels as if the relentlessness of existence here briefly finds a sonic expression that captures Selma Lagerlöf’s intentions.

The sparse – or rather ascetic – soundscape, together with the humble peasant costumes, reflects the harsh, monotonous life of a Swedish village before the world turned modern. And the plot? A poor farmer worships his daughter, but when she leaves for Stockholm as a young woman and never returns, his years of yearning drive him, in a Don Quixote-like fashion, to believe himself emperor of the imaginary land of Portugalia, with his daughter naturally imagined as its ruler. The father’s longing borders on madness, while the daughter’s neglect or thoughtlessness ultimately turns against her: in a Godot-like manner, he waits and waits for her – just as she, after his drowning, waits for him, unable to find his body.

The piece is carried by an almost unbroken drone in the choir (produced through collective breathing) – a single sustained tone that, as an artistic device, illustrates how music in theatre can be so minimal that sound itself becomes the message, and the absence of a musical narrative becomes the point. »One tone played beautifully is enough,« Arvo Pärt once said. Except that here, the tone is sung – and in this work, his statement is affirmed in the most radical way: a maximal expression achieved through minimal means, realised with striking precision by Vokalensemblet ÆTLA.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease

16.10

A Microphone In the Nervous System

IKI: »BODY«

IKI, 17.10

Therese Wiwe Vilmar

It sounds as if someone has placed a microphone directly inside the nervous system’s electrical impulses. The Nordic electroacoustic vocal ensemble IKI explores the boundaries between body and technology on their fifth, self-produced album BODY, where the five singers’ bodies merge into one large, organic rhythm box.

The tracks change form as the body breathes, dances, awakens, runs, wanders – in the imperative mood. The harmonically unison ripple of »Float« is countered by flickering modem-like sounds in »Regenerate«. Everything is framed by the recurring theme »Circuit«, which ultimately gathers the fragments into a single linguistic statement: »Are you gone when your body is not breathing?«

BODY demands concentration. IKI claims that all sounds on the album are created with the voice – a counterpoint to the electrically manipulated, a kind of reversed version of synthesizer sounds that imitate the human voice. It’s an incomprehensible mystery one keeps listening for: how can the voice produce the accordion-like sound on »Breath«, panned all the way to the left and slowly taking over the entire soundscape? Of course, it can’t do so on its own. The recording itself is an electronic mediation. The technological tools act as a microscope for vocal expression. It’s powerful because it asks about the transitions between human and machine, between life and afterlife. Yet the premise holds a paradox that never fully resolves.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

10.10

Miy name is Bjarke Niemann – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is everything that can only be described far more poorly with words.«

Bjarke Niemann is the lead singer, songwriter, and producer of the Danish band Spleen United. The group broke through with Godspeed Into The Mainstream in 2005 and has performed at, among other places, Roskilde Festival and the Copenhagen Opera House. Bjarke Niemann has also composed and developed music for TV and video games – including the international game series Hitman – and has produced albums with artists such as Soleima, Statisk, Afskum, and Hugorm.

playlist

06.10

My name is Motis Necrojam – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is the pursuit of original failure...«

Motis Necrojam is the singer and collager with the Noseflutes and The Clicking Stick, a pair of combos from the old English Birmingham times, adorned with new-times dedication to derailment, approved by Sir John Peel, via their four live sessions for his mighty BBC Radio programme, occasional treaders of the boards, musicians with alias obsessions. One thing Necrojam has is a digit on the diminishing pulse.