Kåre Kolberg: Nova CD

Available November 2009. Distributed by Musikkoperatorene.

Kåre Kolberg (b.1936) is one of Norway`s foremost contemporary composers and is regarded as one of the pioneers of early electronic music and cross-artistic art in the Scandinavia. He has composed music for film, theatre and chamber orchestras to jazz acts such as Svein Finnerud Trio and Jan Garbarek.

The electronic tape composition presented on this CD was composed for the multi-media work NOVA created together with the artist Anders Kjær, presented at the Henie Onstad Art Centre from the 2nd to the 22th August 1972. NOVA was one of Norway`s first sound installations. It included a specially designed light show and music played from tape - blended together with a huge 13 x 19 meter installation consisting of glass, rubber tires and piles of paper that the audience could walk through. The composition made for this piece was found on a tape in the centre`s archives and Prisma Records is proud to release an hitherto unknown gem in Norwegian early electronic music history.

Keith Fullerton Whitman/Mimaroglu Music Sales wrote:

one of the finds-of-the-year in regards to unheard early electronic music ...

in 1972 composer kåre kolberg composed this 25-minute piece as an “accompaniment” to anders kjær’s titular “sound-environment” (detailed below) installed at the henie onstad art center in oslo ; the master-tape was summarily buried in the center’s archives, until lasse marhaug (in charge of rejuvenating the center’s in-house record label prisma) turned it up, some 37 years later ...

comprised of chopped-up trumpet, lid-slam grand piano, vocal phonèmes (ala amirkhanian’s “lexical music”) arranged into a heavily-filtered, explosion-heavy array, this piece ranks up there with dark concrète masterpieces from the likes of andré almuro, bent lorentzen, and the like ... highly recommended !!!