50 guitars to Borealis 2024

Kim Myhr does special things with guitars and brings his visionary approach to the instrument to Borealis 2024.  For his Borealis commission he will create dynamic physical sound worlds with the help of 50 12 string guitars engaging everyone from rusty guitar heroes, eager high school students and enthusiastic camp fire musicians in Bergen and surrounding area. Kim Myhr is among Norway’s most productive and innovative musicians and composers. His music is based on an orchestral exploration of the guitar and has been nominated for both the Nordic Music Prize and the Norwegian Grammys. Do you like to play the guitar?

Show your interest in taking part in Kim’s commission! 

Reviews and praise

This year’s festival attracted attention both locally and internationally. Read the exciting observations about the festival in everything from Bergens Tidene to The New York Times – and dream back!

Read the reviews

YrrY to Gloppen Musikkfest

We are very proud to announce that the four works from our new music creators in this year’s Borealis Ung Komponist are continuing their journey!

Ensemble YrrY, together with Carmen Bóvida, has been invited to Gloppen Musikkfest on 9 June to perform the new works of Luke Drozd, Eline Rafteseth, Susanne Xin and Guoste Tamulynaite!

More about the event

We stand with Papillon

As independent cultural workers and art organisations in Bergen and Norway, we express our public support to Papillon and our trans and queer colleagues, collaborators and audiences. This is in light of the recent verdict from Bergen District Court regarding Papillon. The statement is already signed by 250 cultural workers and 40 culture organisations.

Read the support letter and sign

Anniversary publication

We celebrated 20 years of experimental music and genre-crossing fun during this year’s festival. On that occasion, we created an anniversary publication with reflections from old trotters, thoughts about the future, photos and memories.

The book was printed by Pamphlett, and feels lovely in your hand, but if you don’t have a physical copy you can now read it online!

Read here

Survey 2023

We need your feedback!

Were you at Borealis this year? It only takes five minutes to tell us how it was. Everyone who answers the survey is in the draw for a Borealis Pass for Borealis 2024 and a pair of Borealis socks!

Fill out the survey

Radio Space 2023

In 2023 Radio Space returns in a special collaboration with Danish radio station The Lake, to stream new commissioned Works for Radio, 24/7 between 15–31 March. Initiated by The Lake, Works for Radio is a commissioning project that since 2016 has facilitated new art being made for radio. For this project Borealis joined like minded radio broadcasters The Lake Radio, Radiophrenia (Glasgow, UK) and colaboradio (Berlin, DE) in selecting five new art works for broadcast from artists Kari Robertson, Nicole L’Huillier, Jenny Hval, Asmaa Jama and Linda Lamignan.

Read more
Listen here

In-depth interview with Guoste Tamulynaite

In the run-up to the festival we have published in-depth interviews with all the participants of this year’s Borealis Ung Komponist. The last interview is with Guoste Tamulynaite, who is both a classical performing pianist and an experimental composer!

Lately she has been thinking a lot about musicality, which is also the title of her piece being performed by ensemble YrrY on Friday 17 March during Borealis 2023 next week. Guoste often extracts sounds, movements or objects, and examines the complexity of these individual things. She writes down the ideas on lists that she continuously develops, with an inexhaustible amount of possibilities for exploration. 

Photo: Thor Brødreskift/Borealis

Read Guoste’s interview
Read Susanne’s interview
Read Luke’s interview
Read Eline’s interview

Maryanne Amacher – GLIA

After two sold out shows in Berlin, Maryanne Amacher’s GLIA is coming to Bergen / Åsane Kulturhus, 18 March 20:00–21:00

Here is what you can expect:
You enter a dark room. Seven acoustic musicians are sitting on a pyramid of low platforms. The acoustic musicians begin to play alone, but are soon joined by electronically generated sounds broadcast from speakers scattered around the room. You can walk around and experience different sound zones, lay down in your favourite zone, or sit on a chair at the edges of the room to get the experience more at a distance. Twice in the piece, four of the live musicians walk around in the audience. The piece starts quietly and ends quietly, but in the middle you will experience different intense frequencies as well as volumes.

Don’t forget that there is also a free talk about Maryanne Amacher’s life and work at Bergen Kunsthall on Thursday 16 March, with Bill Dietz and Axel Wieder! 


Read more about Maryanne Amacher – GLIA