Underskog

Ole Henrik Moe (N), Kari Rønnekleiv (N), Hilary Jeffery (UK) and James Fulkerson (US) Two violins. Two trombones. Live composed music.

The quartet will spend the week before the concert making the music they’ll play. It will most probably be improvised. More or less. All the musicians are familiar with composing. Live or not. This is just to say.

This is the third in a series of concerts in Norwegian Seamen’s churches world wide, with collabortions between Norwegian and local artists. The first two were in Berlin and Singpore in 2010. In summer, all play in Oslo.

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Ole-Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv are married and work together. They are concidered outsiders in even the most open-minded of academic music circles, Rønnekleiv’s and Moe’s kin are more likely sound artists like Deathprod, Maja Ratkje and Lasse Marhaug or composers like Scelsi, Feldman and Varese. Their recent double CD on Rune Grammofon contains some of the most extreme solo violin music ever written, performed and recorded. Two pieces lasting 40 and 43 minutes, both pushing the performer to the edge when it comes to endurance and concentration.

James Fulkerson, an American native who moved to Europe in 1973 and eventually settled in Holland, rapidly became the most celebrated trombone player of his generation. He released albums of compositions for trombone by John Cage (1992) and Christian Wolff (2000). On the other hand, he has released very little of his own compositions. However, he has composed hundreds of works, starting with the Quintet No 1 (1965). In addition, he founded the Barton Workshop in Amsterdam in 1989, an ensemble whose goal is to perform works on the leading edge of contemporary music, including some that are not notated, and has since served as its director and trombonist. It has collaborated with many composers, including Nicolas Collins, Frank Denyer, Alvin Lucier, and Christian Wolff, and has also given premières of works by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Jerry Hunt, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, and Galina Ustvolskaya, among many others.

Hilary Jeffery is a trombonist and composer active in the fields of improvised, electronic and contemporary composed music. He also composes music with computer based electronics, for acoustic instruments and often in dance, theatre and film productions. He has studied at Dartington College of Arts, the University of York, the Institute of Sonology and with James Fulkerson at the European Dance Development Centre in Arnhem, Netherlands. Subsequently he has worked with dance in a wide variety of ways and with many choreographers including Aurora Corsano, Vania Gala, Eva Karczag, Mary O’Donnell Fulkerson, Liisa Penti, Joao da Silva and Saburo Teshigawara.

The Seamen’s Church project is produced by the Oslo-based concert series Dans for voksne, in Rotterdam in collaboration with Worm, Red Ear and the Seamen’s Church.