PROJECTS
Major interdisciplinary collaborations
OVER SEAS
Over Seas brings together live orchestral music and video art in a compelling celebration of water in all its forms and powers.
Eivind Aadland curates and conducts music spanning musical history, from John Dowland (1604) to Holly Harrison (2022). His water-themed programme interacts with video art created by celebrated artist Elina Brotherus, who draws inspiration from the Baltic Sea, a lighthouse island in Southern Norway, Finnish lakes and the river Ganges. The videos are shown on large screens above the orchestra, offering the audience a powerful multi-dimensional experience.
This is the first time Aadland and Brotherus have worked together, but Aadland is an avid art collector and Brotherus studied piano and harpshichord, and both are interested in collaborating across art forms.
Repertoire
John Dowland: Lachrimae Antiquae (1604)
Missy Mazzoli: Sinfonia for Orbiting Spheres (2013)
John Dowland: Lachrimae Antiquae Novae (1604)
Holly Harrison: Hi-Vis (2022)
John Dowland: Lachrimae Tristes (1604)
Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
The world premiere was given on 19 October 2023 at Kilden Concert Hall, as the first part of the Nordic Art Symphony Project, created by Kilden Concert Hall and the new Kunstsilo Museum, which opens in Spring 2024.
We have tried to create a conversation between the images and the music, rather than the music being a background to the film. it’s beautiful and funny, and it has some sentimental elements, in the most positive way
Eivind Aadland
PEER GYNT – A geography of lies
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a masterpiece - comparable to Faust or The Odyssey. Eivind Aadland and Alexander Polzin are using Edvard Grieg's music as an opportunity to create an adventure through Ibsen's very rich text. They are less interested in illustrating the content of the text or simply fulfilling the expectations of the music, but are instead more curious to explore these worlds by creationg associations.
The themes of excessive individualism versus communal social responsibility make clear just how contemporary this work remains. Perhaps, after each audience-member makes his or her own journey through the music and images, they might be inspired to return to the original Peer Gynt to rediscover where their roads may have met.
SKY BURIAL BY MAT COLLISHAW
Meditations on Death and Nature
Mat Collishaw's haunting video projection juxtaposes the Tibetan death rite of ‘sky burials’ and a dystopian environment set in an inner-city tower block with a live performance of Fauré’s Requiem, creating a powerful and thought-provoking meditation on our relationships with both nature and death.
Collishaw is one of the key figures of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement that emerged in the 1980s and has gone on to international acclaim.
My intention is to present a large video projection that echoes the themes evoked in the music and resonates with broader issues and concerns in the contemporary world
— Mat Collishaw