Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Norwegian Festivals Not to Miss in 2018
Trondheim Voices will be performing Ekkokammer at this year’s festival. Photo: Christina Undrum
Celebrating 25 years of innovative music in Harstad This year, Harstad-based contemporary music festival ILIOS is celebrating its 25th anniversary. With artists such as Trondheim Voices, Maja Ratkje, Trio Mediæval, Susanne Lundeng and Tori Wrånes, the festival aims to spark innovation and creativity. By Line Elise Svanevik
Despite the vast range of female headliners, CEO Anders Eriksson insists that gender has nothing to do with the bookings. “It’s simply because these performers are absolutely incredible. Our aim is to be artistic rather than politically correct,” he says. And there are quite exciting men in the festival line-up too – like the extraordinary tuba players of the Microtub trio, or the unbelievable musical entertainers Polkabjørn and Kleine Heine, making the festival club audience gasp for air. ILIOS always presents a festival exhibition, linking music and other art formats. Curated by Ingeborg Annie 74 | Issue 108 | January 2018
Lindahl, this year’s festival exhibitor is the Brazilian-Japanese textile artist Kiyoshi Yamamoto. His appearance at ILIOS includes a performance featuring the 16 singers of Vokal Nord.
‘Absolute pling-plong’ The road to creating a festival for contemporary music has been long, and when ILIOS-festivalen first saw the light of day in 1993, new music was still relatively scary to a lot of people. “Contemporary music was referred to as ‘absolute pling-plong’,” explains Eriksson, who has worked in the music industry for many years. “It was music for the few, and perhaps rightly so. Contemporary music
almost developed into a genre of itself. But we doubled the number of visitors last year and registered that there was a whole audience of new people. Those of us who work with the programming decided to slightly expand our views of genre and format – and so did the audience. Voilà!” Today, terms like innovation and creativity have become important when talking about the future of Arctic Norway, and Eriksson explains that this is exactly what the revised approach to new music is about. “It’s about finding new roads and different ways of doing things,” he says. “We don’t have limits to our genres like we did 25 years ago. Contemporary art music can have references to pop or jazz – there can be elements from folk music, electronica and chamber music.” The Spice Girls-themed name of the festival exhibition, Tell me what you want, what you really, really want, proves that today’s contemporary art features an