11 November
Østre
Doors open: 19:30
Concert starts: 20:00
Borealis wants music to be accessible to everyone, regardless of their finances – pay what you can for the concert, and support us if you’re able to!
Pay what you can: 0/50/100 NOK
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Tickets will also be available at the door.
Our much-loved Borealis Listening Club is back! This time in new clothes, as a concert at Østre, featuring Ensemble Obsidian!
Join us on 11 November to hear works by three composers who took part in BUK 2024/25: Eira Sjaastad Huse, Daiyen Jone Castro and Jakob Thonander Glans.
Over the course of a year, and with guidance from mentors Okkyung Lee, Camille Norment and Sigurd Fischer Olsen, the composers developed new works in collaboration with Ensemble Obsidian, an inimitable trio of voice, flute and cello. The works were originally presented at Borealis 2025, and now return in a new setting.
The three works we’ll hear explore texture, sound and storytelling, each in their own way.
In Eira Sjaastad Huse’s Salmon Songs, the journey of the salmon provides a starting point for a virtuosic vocal work. Instinct, migration and the call of the salmon are woven into music that moves between storytelling and pure sound.
Daiyen Jone Castro’s Studies of Believe Memories draws on reminiscences from a Cuban childhood. Here, memory is experienced as scenes we return to and work through, filtered through Castro’s characteristic interest in timbre, texture and sonic effect, and in setting silence against rhythm and contrast against continuity.
Jakob Thonander Glans’ emo katarsis brings his background as a guitarist in the hardcore band RONÖM into his compositional work. The work follows Glans’ self-proclaimed “brutalist” aesthetic: music that is bold, simple, heavy and deliberately “cheap”. Built around extreme dynamic contrasts and fast tempos, emo katarsis aims for an immediate, physical release rather than a contemplative experience.
Come listen with us, and experience three very different approaches to making music – brought together in one concert.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Eira Sjaastad Huse
Eira Sjaastad Huse is an opera singer and composer based in Oslo. She holds a master’s degree in classical singing from the Norwegian Academy of Music and Barratt Due, as well as a diploma in composition and orchestration from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where her mentors included Rolf Wallin and Rune Rebne. Her music moves between the consonant and the expressionistic, the old and the new.
Daiyen Jone Castro
Daiyen Jone Castro is a Cuban-born flutist, composer and educator based in Bergen. Trained as a classical flutist in Havana, she moved to Norway in 2015 and completed studies in jazz, composition and music education at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, in 2023. Her work draws on Cuban music and Latin American jazz alongside free improvisation and electronics, and she is active in ensembles including NH3, Heavy Astro and Reflejos Band.
Jakob Thonander Glans
Jakob Thonander Glans is a composer and guitarist based between Oslo, Gothenburg and Warsaw, active as a guitarist in the hardcore punk band RONÖM. He studied at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg, graduating in 2021, and was an Erasmus exchange student at the Fryderyk Chopin University in Warsaw. He describes his own style as “brutalist” — bold, simple, heavy and deliberately “cheap”, built on extreme dynamic contrasts and fast tempos. He received the composition prize in the Midgard Competition in 2023.
Ensemble Obsidian
Zsuzsa Zseni (voice) is a Hungarian mezzo-soprano based in Bergen, moving as naturally between notated music, improvisation and electronics. She has recently performed at the Reykjavík Arts Festival, Bergen Church Music Festival and Bergen International Festival.
Berit Hella Lindberg (flute) studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Sibelius Academy, and is known for her rich range of extended techniques, including multiphonics, “whistle tones”, flute beatboxing and circular breathing. She has premiered numerous new works and performed at Den Nationale Scene.
Matias Monsen (cello) is active in contemporary music, prog metal and popular music, with studio and stage experience with artists such as Aurora, Sigrid, deLillos and Kaizers Orchestra. He is also a member of Drott.