New release: ARNE NORDHEIM: Selected Works for Television 1967-1974 [DVD]

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.

New release: CAMILLE NORMENT: Toll CD

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