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!
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.
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!
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!
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.
The New York Times has written a beautiful article summing up our 20th anniversary festival, presented on the front page of the Arts section on 22nd of March!
Thanks for lovely words and photographs, Jennifer Gersten and David B. Torch!
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
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.
In the run-up to the festival, we publish in-depth interviews with all the participants in this year’s Borealis Ung Komponist. Now we have spoken to Susanne Xin, who is a performing artist, pianist, music teacher, and more!
Susanne started the story with her work by telling about when her dad fled the war in Vietnam, out to sea, and ends up in Norway.
Photo: Thor Brødreskift/Borealis
We are proud to have achieved Balansmerket, in good company with 36 other organizations that are also actively working towards greater safety and inclusion in the cultural industry.
Balansemerket is an initiative to prevent discrimination and sexual harassment among people working in the arts and culture. They offer workshops, resources, guidelines and suggested actions.
They have interviewed our Managing Director Rachel Louis about some of the actions we are taking to create events that are accessible and interesting to more people, including in Relaxed Performances.
