Arne Nordheim (1931-2010) is widely regarded as Norway’s best-known composer after Edvard Grieg. But did you know that he was a multidisciplinary artist and that his work inspired several of the country’s greatest visual artists?
Arne Nordheim’s art extends way beyond the confines of music. Throughout his life, he also worked closely with other art forms, such as theatre, fine arts, ballet, film, literature, architecture and installation art. In 1955, a journalist asked the young, up-and-coming composer: “What about the present, the future and -isms?” Arne Nordheim replied confidently: “No -isms for me, please!”
This DVD-release shows how Nordheim’s 50-year long multidisciplinary and ground-breaking career lived up to this motto and established him as a key figure of Norwegian, post-war art. This is the first opportunity to see his pioneering works in the field of television art created in collaboration with Norwegian visual artists such as Per Kleiva and Rolf Aamot, and known NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Bureau) technicians and directors such as Ole Henrik Moe, Stein-Roger Bull and Rolf Clemens. The DVD also includes the hour-long documentary Occupation: Composer, a film about Arne Nordheim made by Istvan Korda Kovacs in 1974.
The DVD accompanies the exhibition Arne Nordheim in the world of arts: No “-isms” for me, please! shown at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter August 22th 2013 – January 12th 2014.
This release is supported by The Freedom of Expression Foundation Oslo and The Norwegian Society of Composers.
Camille Norment - Toll
PRISMACD717
Releasedate: September 9th 2013
Distributed through Musikkoperatørene, Forced Exposure, F-Minor, iTunes and Spotify
Camille Norment (b. 1970) is an American born artist, composer and musician living and working in Norway. For her debut album Toll she assembled an ensemble consisting of electric guitar, Norwegian hardingfele, and the rare glass armonica to explore the instruments’ collective sensual and contextual psychoacoustics. Toll resonates through a tantalizing union of its instruments’ voices and their often paradoxical cultural histories. Each of the instruments were simultaneously revered and feared or even outlawed at various points in their histories.
In a slipstream of warping time and abrasive textures, the music levels ‘beauty’ with ‘noise’, and the consonant with the dissonant, as it embraces scratches, squeals, and taunting microtones as equals to purest of tones. Forming earworms and wooing songs, simple melodic phrases reference one another throughout the tracks - the echo is like the conjuring and re-forming of a memory that is at once psychological and somatic.
Toll was recorded at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway during the crystalline resonance of 18-21 February 2013. Besides Camille Norment the album feature the musicians Håvard Skaset and Vegard Vårdal.
The album is released by Henie Onstad Kunstsenters label Prisma Records.
For more info go to www.prismarecords.blogspot.com and www.hok.no
Tracklist:
1. Toll
2. Lyst
3. Glare
Hal Clark – Electro-Acoustic Works 1974-75
PRISMACD716
Release date: July 1st 2013
Distributed by Musikkoperatørene
Digital: iTunes, Spotify, Wimp
Composer, sound designer and curator/researcher Harold (Hal) Clark moved to Norway from San Francisco in the early 1970s to carry on his musical studies and career. In 1972 he was hired as a producer and tonmeister at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter at Høvikodden, Norway. Here he co-founded the Norwegian Studio for Electronic Music (NSEM) together with the late composer Arne Nordheim (1931-2010).
Meeting with young Norwegian composers in regular salon-workshops and bringing with him the influences of the renowned San Francisco Tape Music Centre (studied with Robert Erickson), Harold commissioned technology artist Don Buchla to incorporate his series 502 digital-analog hybrid electronic instrument design into the completion of the NSEM studio in 1974. It was considered one of the foremost advanced instrument inventions at the time.
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and Harold Clark have now collaborated to publish his works from this period as a legacy project. Part of Harold’s electro-acoustic repertoire is exhibited with the release of this CD, capturing the essence of NSEM while revealing some of the composer’s musical character.
Harold Clark left Norway after 10 years and now lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he is writing a book on the ecology of contemporary music composition and the possible extinction of the modern composer as a socially relevant phenomenon in a world of corporate media.Prisma Records and HOK are proud to present this unknown hidden gem in the history of Norwegian and Canadian electronic and avant-garde music.
