FESTIVAL PROGRAM THURSDAY 11 MAY 15.00
SUSTAINED EFFORT by Sandra Boss and Ea Borre 9 Bridge, Immervad / Frederiksgade
16-18.30
LIVING SPACES by Manos Tsangaris 5 DOKK1
17.00
OPENING RECEPTION, HYSTERONS by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir 7 Spanien19C
20.00
DE FIRE ÅRSTIDER by Bent Sørensen and Tomas Espedal 1 Godsbanen, Åbne Scene
21.00
SPOR OPENING RECEPTION 3 Teater Refleksion
22.00
VOILA, THAT’S MY LIFE! by Jagoda Szmytka 3 Teater Refleksion
FRIDAY 12 MAY 12 & 12.30
HYPERREALITIES by Martin Andreas Hirsti-Kvam 10 Mølleparken
14.00
RECEPTION AND ARTIST TALK, PANAUDITUM by Zeno van den Broek
6 Kunsthal Aarhus
15.00
SUSTAINED EFFORT by Sandra Boss and Ea Borre 6 Kunsthal Aarhus, courtyard
20.00
WEEP AT THE ELASTIC AS IT STRETCHES – Concert with ensemble SCENATET,
Jagoda Szmytka, Christian Winther Christensen and Matthew Rogers
22.00
1 Godsbanen, Åbne Scene
TELEPROMPTER PARADISE by Leo Hofmann 3 Teater Refleksion
SATURDAY 13 MAY 11-13.30
LIVING SPACES by Manos Tsangaris 5 DOKK1
15.00
BOOK LAUNCH: SKIBENE by Jeppe Ernst 6 Kunsthal Aarhus
16 & 16.30
HYPERREALITIES by Martin Andreas Hirsti-Kvam 10 Mølleparken
20.00
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 with Alexander Khubeev,
Caroline Louise Miller, Murat Çolak and Nico Sauer 2 Godsbanen, Teater Katapult
22.00 EGYPTIAN FEMALES EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SESSION 8 Tape SUNDAY 14 MAY 11-13.30
LIVING SPACES by Manos Tsangaris 5 DOKK1
14.00
SPOR NEW MUSIC SCHOOL CONCERT 2 Godsbanen, Teater Katapult
17.00
ISCREEN, YOUSCREAM! Closing concert with Brigitta Muntendorf and
Ensemble Garage 1 Godsbanen, Åbne Scene
EXHIBITION PROGRAM 8-28 MAY 8-14 MAY / All hours
EVERYBODY CAN BE PRESENT by Jagoda Szmytka 4 LYNfabrikken
11-14 MAY / 10-17.00
PANAUDITUM by Zeno van den Broek 6 Kunsthal Aarhus
11-14 MAY
THE ACOUSUIT by Nico Sauer, various locations in Aarhus C
12-28 MAY / 13-17.00
HYSTERONS by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir 7 Spanien19C
13-14 MAY / 14-14.30
A FLOCK OF STONES by Zeno van den Broek 6 Kunsthal Aarhus
VENUES 1 Godsbanen, Åbne Scene, Skovgaardsgade 3 2 Teater Katapult, Godsbanen, Skovgaardsgade 3 3 Teater Refleksion, Frederiksgade 72 B, 1 4 LYNfabrikken, Vestergade 49 Øs tb tor anevet
5 DOKK1, Hack Kampmanns Pl. 2 6 Kunsthal Aarhus, J. M. Mørks Gade 13 7 SPANIEN19C, Kalkværksvej 5A 8 TAPE, Mejlgade 53 9 Bridge, Immervad / Frederiksgade
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FE STIVAL TICKETS TICKET INFO
Festival Pass DKK 495 / DKK 350 (visitors under 30)
TICKET INFO
Tickets for single concerts Presale: DKK 100 / DKK 60 (visitors under 30) At venue: DKK 120 / DKK 80 (visitors under 30) Tickets for LIVING SPACES including HOME, CITY PIECES and SOUTHERN by Manos Tsangaris are only available at the SPOR ticket sale at DOKK1: DKK 100 (free for children under 14, accompanied by an adult)
Buy tickets www.billetto.dk
Free entrance Exhibitions, WAIT! by Manos Tsangaris, SUSTAINED EFFORT by Sandra Boss and Ea Borre and HYPERREALITIES by Martin Andreas Hirsti-Kvam
FE STIVAL TEAM Festival and Artistic Directors: Anna Berit Asp Christensen and Anne Marqvardsen / SPOR New Music School, Educational Leader: Østen Mikal Ore / SPOR New Music School, Coordinator: Simone Didrichsen Knudsen / Production Manager: Rikke Frisk / Production Assistant: Maria Holst Petersen / Volunteer Coordination: Simone Didrichsen Knudsen and Sandra Sohn / Production Manager, Living Spaces: Laura Møller Henriksen, SCENATET / Production Assistant, Living Spaces: Victor Hempel-Mydtskov / Volunteer Coordination, Living Spaces: Vibeke Holm / Choir Coordination, Living Spaces: Ingrid Callesen / Artistic Assistent, Jagoda Szmytka: Kirstine Skov Hansen / SPOR Photo and Design: Pulsk Ravn / PR and Event: Shayi Addean / PR and Communication: Pernille Lyng / Technical Crew: Pappagallo / Printers: Narayana Press SPOR festival Prøvestensbroen 3, 2 / DK-2300 Copenhagen S / info@sporfestival.dk www.sporfestival.dk find us at
# spor 2017
EPIPHANY Welcome to SPOR 2017 – a magical exploration of everyday life! We are delighted to welcome you to SPOR 2017 and seven highly varied days of experimental new music and sound art. This year we were determined to create a festival program which would turn Aarhus into an everyday mecca of diversity, inspiring fascinating encounters between artists and the audiences across nationalities, ages, gender and cultural preferences. During our own ten-year journey with SPOR, which started back in 2007, we have been through many exciting, uncontrollable and unforeseeable processes which have repeatedly created moments of magic and wonder during the festival and at its many events. This year, these magical moments have inspired the festival theme, EPIPHANY, and thereby the way we have curated the festival program itself. With EPIPHANY as the overall framework for the festival, we wish to explore the magical and inexplicable aspects of everyday life, and to delve into the extraordinary concealed within the ordinary. During the seven days of SPOR 2017 we will be presenting a whole range of concerts, performances, exhibitions, interventions, and workshops to dramatize and challenge the private and public spaces of life as we live it. Everyday life as we know it will be deonstructed and then resurrected as something completely new, or perhaps even grotesque. For the third year in a row SPOR is the initiator of SPOR New Music School, the successful educational flagship inviting inquisitive, musical children between the ages of eleven and fifteen to participate in workshops and concerts during the days of the festival. When all the different SPOR participants – students, artists, volunteers and partners – come together, they bring unique energy to the festival, and we should like to thank everybody for their individual engagement in SPOR 2017. We wish you all a fantastic and wondrous 2017 SPOR festival! Anna Berit Asp Christensen and Anne Marqvardsen Festival and Artistic Directors
Photo: Pernille Lyng
11 MAY 15.00
Bridge, Immervad/Frederiksgade
12 MAY 15.00 Kunsthal Aarhus, courtyard
URBAN LIVE PERFORMANCE by Sandra Boss and Ea Borre (2017) 20”, World Premiere Sustained Effort is a collaboration between composer/sound artist Sandra Boss and artist/organ builder Ea Borre. Together they have created an over-dimensioned accordion-like instrument which will occupy the public spaces of Aarhus in a performance that will be very hard to miss. The work builds on an urban sound phenomenon that most people have experienced: when you walk the streets of any town or city, the sound of the busker playing his accordion becomes part of the everyday soundscape. The music may reach the ears of the passing crowd as a comfortable backing track or perhaps as a disturbing, undesirable sound environment. Sustained Effort turns the unthankful lot of the busker into a moment of contemplation and wonder. The piece slowly unfolds as two performers move away from each other. The instrument expands in dimensions and in volume as the bellows of the accordions stretch to an unexpected degree. The bellows act as a giant lung, creating a rhythm of breaths while inhaling and exhaling sounds through the instrument. The physical growth of the instrument affects the character of the accordion sound, which stretches and morphs into long droning tones, noisy rhythms and new melodic structures. The performance evolves as a dance or fight between the two performers as they struggle to extract sound from their instruments. The work was commissioned by SPOR festival in connection with the festival’s Call for Proposals 2017, and is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation Performed by Sandra Boss, Katrine Møllebæk and Ying-Hsueh Chen
11 MAY / 16-18.30 13 MAY / 11-13.30 14 MAY / 11-13.30 DOKK1
A GIGANTIC PIECE OF MUSIC THEATER IN FOUR PARTS by Manos Tsangaris (2016-17), Scandinavian Premiere LIVING SPACES is a new site-specific music theatre, rethinking the relation between the everyday life and the act of staging. The piece consists of four connected, but very different live music installations: WAIT!, CITY PIECES, HOME and SOUTHERN. The four live music installations will be performed by the art and music ensemble SCENATET, soloists and performers, in the most central locations of the DOKK1 library. Users of DOKK1 and the SPOR festival audience will be invited to move around the building and the individual stages, from intimate situations in the spaces of U1, P1 and P2 to a spectacular choral piece at Rampen. The four pieces recompose the spaces in which they are being played. They will enter familiar situations from everyday life to create moments of wonder and magic, as the spectators physically and mentally become part of the performative process and the ones to complete the piece. The installations may not be immediately recognizable, but together they develop a path and a significant plot through the library. WAIT! is a multi-media choir installation, performed by 20 choral singers lead by conductor Vivianne Sydnes. The choral singers move around the location of the installation, approaching different ‘stations’, where they perform small pieces, mixing acoustic music and digital media. The piece is performed at Rampen, the central stairway of DOKK1, and will be looping throughout the opening hours of LIVING SPACES.
CITY PIECES (30”) is a performance installation experimenting with public space and the social relations connected to everyday urban life. The audience and by-passers will experience a composition of movements, light, colours, music and speech, framing and staging the day-to-day life in completely new ways. The piece is performed by SCENATET, and takes place in the space U1. SOUTHERN (7”) is a sensuous musical installation, which challenges usual ways of listening and that uses space in a radically new manner. In small groups of 7 people, the audience is lead into a completely dark room. Here, the audience is seated and two performers start playing a gigantic string system. Sounds and flashes of light appear suddenly and immerse the audience in a symphonic universe of new timbres and visual impressions. The piece is performed by SCENATET, and takes place in the main hall of DOKK1. HOME (65”) is a dramatic music installation exploring contemporary family relations. In groups of 15 people, the audience is invited into a seemingly ordinary family home. Here, the dramas of everyday family life unfold within a mixture of music, singing and repeated social patterns. The piece is performed by SCENATET and pianist Lenio Liatsou, and takes place in the spaces P1 and P2. HOME TIMETABLE 11 MAY / 16.00, 16.30, 17.00, 17.30 13-14 MAY / 11.00, 11.30, 12.00, 12.30 The entrance is every 30 minutes, with 15 new audiences each time PLEASE NOTE Registration for HOME at the SPOR ticket sale at DOKK1 is necessary, due to limited availability All four installations are looped throughout the opening hours of LIVING SPACES Performed by SCENATET Signe Asmussen, soprano / Jakob Bloch Jespersen, bass baritone / Mina Fred, performer / Signe Hørmann Sørensen, actress / Vicky Wright, clarinet / Andras Olsen, trombone / Stefan Baur, saxophone / Frederik Munk Larsen, guitar / Sven Micha Slot, piano/Mads Bendsen, percussion / Matias Seibæk, percussion / Kirsten Riis-Jensen, violin / My Hellgren, cello / Laura Møller Henriksen, production manager / Anna Berit Asp Christensen, artistic director Twenty choral singers / Vivianne Sydnes, choir conductor / Lenio Liatsou, pianist in HOME Produced by SPOR festival and SCENATET in collaboration with Onassis Cultural Centre Athens and Connecting Spaces Hong Kong-Zurich - Zurich University of the Arts In collaboration with DOKK1, SCENATET and littlebit GbR, and supported by Goethe Institut Dänemark, The Danish Arts Foundation, and Aarhus Kommune / Pool for Cultural Development
Photo: Barbara Lubich
Photo © Geir Dokken
11 MAY 20.00 Godsbanen Åbne Scene
OPENING CONCERT PERFORMED BY THE POING ENSEMBLE by Bent Sørensen and Tomas Espedal (2015-16) 55”, Danish Premiere Keeping to the spirit of the EPIPHANY theme, SPOR festival will present the magical everyday stories from Bent Sørensen’s and Tomas Espedal’s piece De fire Årstider, performed by the legendary POING ensemble. The concert will be followed by an opening reception at Teater Refleksion, where everyone is invited to mark the launch of SPOR 2017. In a unique collaboration between two of the most prominent Nordic artists in the fields of music and literature, the flow of the seasons is recreated in a work with music by composer Bent Sørensen and words by writer Tomas Espedal. Året is the latest, well-reviewed novel by Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal, in which he portrays the flow of the different seasons and their changes, constantly – repeating, but always in new ways. Life, art, (unhappy) love, the world and existence are framed by the changing seasons and portrayed through hiking trips on French country roads, interminable hotel rooms, and many, many bottles of wine. For quite a while the Danish composer Bent Sørensen has been wanting to reveal the changes of the four seasons in a musical work. In the combination of Espedal’s diary-like texts and Sørensen’s beautiful and refined sound universe a musical work arises, transforming the two artists’ parallel takes on the year. De fire Årstider expounds upon the variability and ephemerality of the world, of nature and of the human race. Performed by POING & Bent Sørensen, narrator POING: Frode Haltli, accordion / Håkon Thelin, double bass / Rolf-Erik Nystrøm, saxophones Supported by the Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen, Åbne Scene – Godsbanen, Music Norway and FFUK, Norway PLEASE NOTE After the concert Edition Wilhelm Hansen and SPOR festival host a reception at Teater Refleksion
Photo © Christine Coulange
11 MAY 22.00 Teater Refleksion
EXPERIMENTAL EVENING PERFORMANCE by Jagoda Szmytka (2016) 55”, Scandinavian Premiere Voila, that’s my life! is an experimental performance, exploring the connection between music and everyday life as it unfolds in modern society. Voila, that’s my life! was premiered at the French Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2016, and is part of the LIFE project, a three-part living composition, also including the real-life performance Everybody can be present and the Wohnbox Series video sculptures. Together with violist Stephen Upshaw and programmer and media artist Yannick Hofmann, Jagoda Szmytka creates a multi-medial universe, playfully twisting the title and musical material of American composer Morton Feldman’s ensemble piece The viola in my life. The performance opens with a manifesto and its guiding principle “Art and music are inseparable from life”, framing Jagoda Szmytka’s mission of bringing musical phenomenon and the idea of the human life together as one. This is followed by seven sections reflecting the seven days of the week, all shedding light on the different characteristics of contemporary life and the millennial generation, always on-the-go and plugged into new media. Live video and amplified sound play with space and light, immersing the audience in a unique sensory experience, turned inside out in an atmosphere that is humorous and intimate in equal measure.
12 MAY/12 & 12.30 13 MAY/16 & 16.30 Mølleparken
SITE-SPECIFIC CITY SOUNDWALK by Martin Andreas Hirsti-Kvam (2017) 10”, World Premiere
Based on the term ‘hyperreality’, composer Martin Andreas Hirsti-Kvam has created a site-specific city soundwalk, exploring the connection between the real and the virtual. The participants of the soundwalk will be wearing headphones and experi ence one of Aarhus’ most central urban spaces through real sounds of the environment blending seamlessly with a virtual soundscape, all augmented to a level where the listener will find it hard to decipher one from the other. An ultra-sharp sonic environment will envelope the participants, raising their awareness of themselves, their actions and their surroundings, lending new perspectives to the reality of everyday life. The soundwalk will thereby transform quotidian experience into a hyperreal or even magical one. The work was commissioned by SPOR festival in connection with the festival’s Call for Proposals 2017, and is supported by the Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen
D IARY O F S O U N D S
12 MAY 20.00 Godsbanen Åbne Scene
A CONCERT PERFORMED BY THE ART AND MUSIC ENSEMBLE SCENATET sky-me, type-me by Jagoda Szmytka (2011), 7”, Scandinavian Premiere Chorale by Christian Winther Christensen (2017) 10”, European Premiere Weep at the Elastic as it Stretches: An adaptation of N.F. Simpson’s Prayer by Matthew Rogers (2017) 40”, Scandinavian Premiere Since its establishment in 2008, the art and music ensemble SCENATET has had close and collaborative relations with the younger generation of Danish composers, as well as a strong commitment to the international new music scene. For this concert, three current collaborations will be presented through the performance of two completely new works written for the ensemble by Christian Winther Christensen (DK) and Matthew Rogers (GB), and an experimental vocal piece by Jagoda Szmytka (PL).
sky-me, type-me by the Polish composer and artist Jagoda Szmytka is inspired by modern forms of communication and the replacement of faceto-face relationships by email, messaging and Skype. Four megaphonewielding vocalists bring to life the rhythms of typing, the glitch-ridden resemblances of human speech, the unstable flow of a connection, and the simplification of sentiment when emoticons are more convenient than words. “What is nice is when people perform or listen to this piece and recognize a little piece of the reality they live in,” Jagoda Szmytka says. Chorale is a new piece by the Danish composer Christian Winther Christen sen, commissioned by ensemble SCENATET, who premiered the piece at MATA Festival in New York, April 2017. The piece was inspired by one of Christian Winther Christensen’s earlier pieces – the ten-year-old Knocking Out From Heavens Door, and is composed for eight musicians, with two guitars in front: one electric and one acoustic. The electric guitar will only be amplified when the acoustic guitar is playing, and as a result the two guitars will unite in a homogeneous timbre even though they are continually playing against each other. Brief flashes of O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross by J. S. Bach break through on the electric guitar as ghostly triads from the piano come and go. Weep at the Elastic as it Stretches: An adaptation of N.F. Simpson’s Prayer is a new piece by British composer Matthew Rogers, based on a prayer extracted from Simpson’s 1958 play A Resounding Tinkle. It takes place as a radio broadcast that is part of a scene both domestic and ludicrous. It asks that we rejoice in all manner of unexpected objects, situations and concepts, taking great delight in the most categorical of descriptions and in a complete lack of distinction between the mundane and the exotic. As is typical of Simpson’s work, the effect is both ridiculous and sublime, encapsulating the ineffability of an existence somehow both arbitrary and profound. Matthew Roger’s piece wishes to embody the attitudes and spirit of Simpson’s prayer, the final stage direction of which reads: The introductory bars of ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’ in an orchestrated version are heard from the wireless ... The piece was commissioned by Kammer Klang for the SCENATET ensemble, which premiered the piece at Cafe Oto in London, in early May 2017. Produced and performed by SCENATET in collaboration with MATA Festival, New York and Kammer Klang, London: Mina Fred, viola / My Hellgren, cello / Frederik Munk Larsen, guitar / Kirsten Riis-Jensen, violin / Matias Seibæk, percussion / Sven Micha Slot, piano / Vicky Wright, clarinet / Marie Sønderskov, flute / Laura Møller Henriksen, production manager / Anna Berit Asp Christensen, artistic director Supported by The Danish Arts Foundation and Åbne Scene – Godsbanen
Photo © Joscha Schell
12 MAY 22.00 Teater Refleksion
AN ELECTRONICA MINI-MELODRAMA by Leo Hofmann (2017) 40”, World Premiere In Teleprompter Paradise, two performers are looking for their true purpose in a state between conducting, playing and listening to music. The audience follows the performance on wireless headphones. Via the headphones a compositional interplay of action and reaction, of real and virtual space takes place. This «Electronica Mini-Melodrama» for live-electronics and two performers thus probes future forms of instrumentality and performance practice. If we are all players and instruments at the same time, if we are all our own prompters, what kind of resonance may result? How do we modulate all our wishes into one single wave? Teleprompter Paradise addresses the desire to let somebody else speak for us, creating intimacy through distance. Two performers examine music situated between medial immutability and transience. The performers do not only have their voices as instruments at their disposal, but also gestural controllers, sensors and speakers. They also use their attention, their gaze, and their gestures to stage-manage and comment on the musicality. Their lips and eyes test the degree of their emphasis on one another and on the audience, and watch out for reactions in order to amplify them. Performed by Leo Hofmann and Filomena Krause Composition and performance: Leo Hofmann Sound design and live electronics: Andi Otto Performance: Filomena Krause Choreography / Outside-Eye: Benjamin van Bebber Supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
13 MAY 15.00 Kunsthal Aarhus
Book Launch Last year Skibene, by Danish composer Jeppe Ernst, had its world premiere at SPOR festival, and this year Jeppe Ernst and SPOR festival 2017 are following up by publishing the piece as a music and art book. Jeppe Ernst is known for his preoccupation with the most fundamental questions about the phenomenon of music. In his consistent perspective, music is not sound and/or tones, but movements and (social) interaction in the fullest sense. The book, Skibene, consists of two parts. The first, Den himmelske Sejlads (The heavenly sailing) is for the imagination, urging the reader to imagine and mingle various smells, ranging form wet asphalt and elderflower to urine and decomposition, thereby creating new harmonies of smells. The second, De jordiske havne (The earthly harbours) guides the reader among specific smells while following three tunes: Melody I – smells from an interior; Melody II – smells from a naked human body; and Melody III – smells from an exterior. The book is published by SPOR festival with support from the Danish Arts Foundation
13 MAY 20.00 Teater Katapult
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 New works selected from SPOR’s Call for Proposals 2017 Since 2010 SPOR has been issuing an annual Call for Proposals and encouraging national as well as international composers and sound artists to delve into the festival theme and submit proposals for innovative works. Through the Call’s eight seasons, more than 35 works by artists from all over the world have contributed international breadth and appeal to SPOR festival. This year 123 proposals reached SPOR, and with a startling and very strong field of applying artists, the Call for Proposals jury decided to increase the number of proposals accepted to six. At this concert the audience will be introduced to four of the six selected artists. They will present their completely new works and individual explorations of the wondrous aspects of everyday life represented by three individual performances by Alexander Khubeev, Caroline Louise Miller, and Murat Çolak, and the pre-launch product presentation of Nico Sauer’s AcouSuit. The Call for Proposals jury consisted of: Cathy Van Eck (BE/NE, sound artist and composer), Jacob Fabricius (DK, artistic director, KUNSTHAL AARHUS), Daniel Ott (DE, composer, pianist and artistic director, Münchener Biennale), Louise Beck (DK, scenographer and artistic director, OperaNord), Anna Berit Asp Christensen & Anne Marqvardsen (DK, directors, SPOR festival). Special thanks to Michael Beil, who acted as a mentor for the artists
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 by Alexander Khubeev (2017) 15�, World Premiere
The Hum by Alexander Khubeev investigates a mystical and intensely annoying sound phenomenon of the same name. It appears in different places around the world with widespread reports of a persistent lowfrequency humming, rumbling or droning noise, which for unknown reasons is only audible to some people. Rumbling sound recordings representing Alexander Khubeev’s variation on existing recordings of the mysterious hum and a specially constructed instrument, set the stage for a mysterious and wondrous sound universe, where the performer literally becomes part of the instrument. Her hand is connected to its strings, controlling the tension and position of the instrument by body movement. The physiological, the visual and the musical elements thereby morph together, creating an almost invisible connection. Performed by Yulia Migunova, steel strings and Alexander Khubeev, sound control
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 by Caroline Louise Miller (2017) 15�, World Premiere In the course of Vivarium, a bizarre spectrum between the surgical and the orgiastic is explored. The fruit, as an everyday object of desire, consumption, and nourishment, opens a window into the potentials and lives of matter, animated by human experimentation, obsession, and sensuality. Two per formers act as a composite body, surgeon-like in nature, but not quite human. They use a variety of culinary, medical, and hand tools to dissect fleshy fruits such as pomegranates and melons. A small camera trained on their hands projects a live feed of the activity onto a scrim in the background, expanding their activity to grotesque proportions. Contact microphones pick up the delicate sounds of flesh, seeds, peel being separated, as well as close hand percussion. The deconstruction of the fruit into pulp, juice, seeds, and pith provokes developments in the behaviour of the performers. Hands that operated precisely and separately at first begin to coalesce and dance together, with the fruit pulp as a medium through which they connect. The flesh of the fruit and the flesh of the performers begin to appear and sound as a single body, blurring lines between organic entities. This blurring, articulated along the spectrum of the surgical and orgiastic, aims to reveal human material obsession, desire, and fetishism as an embodied bond between formations of matter. Performed by Caroline Louise Miller and Anna Jalving
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 by Murat Çolak (2017) approx. 12”, World Premiere
Kanal is a piece for synthesizer with effect pedals, bass shakers and surface transducers, based on the dark and sensuous aspects of the club experience. Murat Çolak will take the audience on a short journey through the air ducts of a monumental dance club, where impactful bass frequencies, arpeggiator rhythms, and a wide sonic spectrum will travel between speakers, audience seats and objects located around the concert space. The sudden and transi tional shifts in the media transmitting the sound will turn the audience’s ears and buttocks on and off, up and down, turning the sense of space inside out. Performed by Murat Çolak
SPOR CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2017 Product pitch and presentation stand by Nico Sauer (2017), World Premiere The AcouSuit is the world’s first garment made to sound good. By passively transforming sound waves, the suit reshapes its acoustic environment while being capable of enhancing the wearer’s personal capabilities of musical listening. Nico Sauer, composer and entrepreneur, will pitch and explain the functionality of his latest development, The AcouSuit, at the SPOR Call for Proposals Concert, 13 May at Godsbanen – Åbne Scene. Further information can be obtained at Nico Sauer’s presentation stand. Here, the audience is invited to do a short psycho-sonic test from which their individualized version of the AcouSuit will be generated and can be previewed as a 3D model. The stand will be located at various locations in the city of Aarhus throughout the festival. More information on www.acousuit.com Concept and design: Nico Sauer Model: Lovisa Björna
13 MAY 22.00 TAPE
EGYPTIAN FEMALES EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SESSION Collective electronic concert of radical experiments and everyday soundscapes, Danish Premiere
In this concert, Egyptian Females Experimental Music Session take us through a collective one-hour concert dedicated to free creative and artistic expression. An abundance of different sound sources and recordings morph together in a radical do-it-yourself experiment, emblematic of the Egyptian capital, Cairo’s soundscape and dynamic environment.
Photo Š Mostafa Abdel Aty
For years now, Asmaa Azouz, Shrouk El Zomor, Jacqueline George, and Yara Mekawei have been collectively and individually intertwined within the world of sound art, noise, and experimental music. Each of the four musicians are actually direct musical descendants of the brilliant sound artists and curator, Ahmed Basiouny who tragically lost his life while protesting in Cairo during the January 2011 revolution.
SPOR NEW MUSIC SCHOOL CONCERT Students from SNMS 2017 in concert In 2015 SPOR kicked off a new ambitious educational project: SPOR New Music School, a composition school for children and young people aged from eleven to fifteen from the Central Region of Denmark. During three intense workshop days, students are guided, inspired and challenged to compose and perform new works for SPOR. The students meet composers, musicians and listen to concerts at the festival – all in order to inspire and widen their musical horizons. This concert is the culmination of SNMS 2017, at which the EPIPHANY theme will provide the starting point for experiments with the instruments, testing new ways of playing, finding new sounds and enhancing all the little sounds that normally only count as secondary to or part of the ‘real’ sound. The young composers/performers will share the stage with Århus Sinfonietta who will play Sechs Bagatellen by Gyorgi Ligeti. This piece, among others, has been introduced to the students early in the process as an example of a composition, which can illustrate this year’s theme and be used as a point of reference. Each group of SNMS-participants has been guided by students from the Composition Programme at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and Malmö Academy of Music, as well as musicians from Århus Sinfonietta and composer and musician Østen Mikal Ore. Participating students from The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and Malmö Academy of Music: Mette Nielsen, Lasse Dan Hansen, Klavs Kehlet Hansen, Lasse Winterbottom, and Daniel Möllås In collaboration with and supported by Aarhus2017, Aarhus Musikskole, Århus Sinfonietta, Danish Composer’s Society, the Danish Arts Foundation, Tuborg Foundation, SNYK, Ultima Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November Musik, Sonning Foundation, The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Kong Christian den Tiendes Fond, The Royal Academy of Music, Malmö Academy of Music, Randers Musikskole, Kulturskolen Skanderborg, Den Kreative Skole Silkeborg, composer Østen Mikal Ore, Retap, Søbogaard, Hanegal, Blockbuster, Sweet Intentions, Ration and Perto
14 MAY 14.00
Photo © Samuel Olsson
Teater Katapult
14 MAY 17.00 Godsbanen Åbne Scene
CLOSING CONCERT PERFORMED BY ENSEMBLE GARAGE by Brigitta Muntendorf (2016), 65”, Scandinavian Premiere For the first time, Brigitta Muntendorf and Ensemble Garage will visit Denmark, and with their piece of music theatre iScreen, YouScream!, they will conclude SPOR 2017 with an everyday explosion. A theme from quotidian life, very real to most of us, will be explored through a dramatic social media opera for ensemble, actress, live-video and electronics, questioning contemporary social media phenomena and behaviour. As you look at a stage set consisting of black boxes, you might ask yourself how you can be sure that nine musicians, an actress and a conductor are really there. And if they truly are hidden within these boxes, you have to ask yourself how they can communicate with each other. You can see a cameraman flitting between the boxes, and you wonder which of the projections on the three screens is being filmed live and which has already taken place. You see people introducing and producing themselves, and hear the music they create. You hear status updates, a tutorial, a fashion haul. You overhear someone sitting next to you telling his neighbour “I can hear sounds made by pictures”. You hear a Ganguro Girl and see a
kind of love, you hear self-optimization and see an EGOrchestra, watch a Beethoven dance, see cloned classics and hear production via selfproduction. You begin to have an idea of how we build collectives with our digital representatives even though we are isolated from one another. You ask yourself what survives in such a society and what does not; who wins and who loses. You ask yourself how these people in their boxes satisfy their needs for companionship, love and recognition. You wonder what kind of feedback counts. Are you still in love or starting to put yourself out there? Are you present enough, are you presentable? Are you your own archive? Are you living in your archive? Living your life away? Or WHAT? Performed by Ensemble Garage and actress Constanze Passin Liz Hirst, flute / Nils Kohler, clarinet / Ruth Velten, saxophone / Małgorzata Walentynowicz, synthesizer / Yuka Ohta, percussion / Till Künkler, trombone / Sabine Akiko Ahrendt, violin / Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg, viola / Eva Boesch, cello Conductor: Mariano Chiacchiarini Director: Michael Höppner Stage and conception: Vincent Mesnaritsch Costume: Sita Messer Sound director: Dominik Kleinknecht Video: Andreas Huck & Roland Nebe Supported by Åbne Scene – Godsbanen, Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten and Kunst Stiftung NRW Composition comissioned by ECLAT Festival financed by Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung A coproduction by Ensemble Garage & Musik der Jahrhunderte PLEASE NOTE After the concert SPOR will host a closing reception at Godsbanen
Photo © Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir
SPOR EXHIBITION PROGRAM 8-28 MAY Each year SPOR curates an ambitious and innovative exhibition program. The main focus is on sound based art and installations, as well as art works with performative elements and live performances. This year, we present pioneering technology in the shape of an acoustic suit, a 24-7 real-life performance, mythical multi-media creatures, experimental electronic improvisations and a sound installation, commenting on our modern surveillance society. Explore the exhibitions, as you visit some of the most important cultural institutions in Aarhus – ready to turn the everyday upside down. The exhibition program is supported by The Danish Arts Council, Visual Arts
by Jagoda Szmytka (2016), Scandinavian Premiere 8-14 MAY / Open all hours / BOX LYNfabrikken Everybody can be present is a seven-day real-life performance and exp eriment by Jagoda Szmytka, thematizing modern life and existential questions associated with our technologized and mediated society. The performance was premiered at the Poesie des Wohnens archi tecture festival in Germany in 2016, and is part of the LIFE project, a three-part living composition which also includes the cross-genre performance Voila, that’s my life! and the Wohnbox Series of video sculptures. For seven days, the BOX exhibition space at LYNfabrikken will be Jagoda Szmytka’s home. The small space will be decorated for 24-7 living, and there she will live, work, eat and sleep, sharing her everyday life experiences with visitors and passers-by. In line with her artistic vision, art and life will become one reality as the stage becomes her home and her home becomes the stage. With Everybody can be present Jagoda Szmytka seeks to explore human life and the mobility of the young, millennial generation through different themes connected to mediated society and modern ways of living. What are the lives of this generation like, and what drives them? How do we want to live now and in the future? In collaboration with LYNfabrikken Supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Ticket to Future Festivals
by Zeno van den Broek 11-14 MAY / 10-17.00 / Kunsthal Aarhus Reception and artist talk Friday 12 MAY / 14.00 Panauditum is a new installation based on the role of sound in our modern surveillance society. We are very aware of the value and strength of our appearance and image but less aware of how valuable and personal the sound we produce is. Our voices may be seen as fingerprints, each with its own unique distinguishable character. Panauditum works with the unconsciously distributed sounds made by visitors to the museum, building an evolving composition of speech and electronic artefacts of communication devices. The resonating wall-mounted sculpture interacts with the visitors, raising awareness on the intimacy of sound in relation to the oppressing reality of hidden surveillance. Commissioned by SPOR festival and Gaudeamus Muziekweek In collaboration with Kunsthal Aarhus
by Nico Sauer 11-14 MAY / Various locations in Aarhus C The AcouSuit is the world’s first garment made to sound good. By passively transforming sound waves, the suit reshapes its acoustic environment while being capable of enhancing personal capabilities of musical listening. Further information can be obtained at Nico Sauer’s presentation stand. Here, the audience is invited to do a short psycho-sonic test from which their individualized version of the AcouSuit will be generated and can be previewed as a 3D model. The stand will be located at various locations throughout the festival. More information on www.acousuit.com Concept and design: Nico Sauer / Model: Lovisa Björna
by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir Opening 11 MAY 17.00 12-28 MAY / 13-17.00 / SPANIEN19C HYSTERONS is a new installation by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, inspired by her research on aspects of the give-and-take relationship of sensory processing. As the mind prioritizes sight over sound in the shifts of perception, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir seeks to hijack the attention, crystallized in HYSTERONS as three sirens. The sirens assume speakercreature forms, while drawing the audience into an almost mythical universe of electronic sound and visual projections. Harsh sine wave feedback glitches evolve over time as the speaker organisms blink in and out of existence, blossoming into unapologetic feminine authority. In collaboration with SPANIEN19C
by Zeno van den Broek 13 & 14 MAY / 14-14.30 / Kunsthal Aarhus A Flock of Stones is an electronic performance by Zeno van den Broek, incorporated into Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga’s installation The Encounter That Took a Part of Me, exhibited at Kunsthal Aarhus. Nkanga has invited Zeno van den Broek, along with other performers, to respond to the idea of the ‘taste of a stone’. Diving into this theme, Zeno van den Broek’s performance explores the auditive qualities of stones in an electronic improvisation. The principle of the fracturing of a stone into multiple smaller stones is brought into musical movements and phrases, interacting with each other and the visitors present in the environment created by Nkanga. In collaboration with Kunsthal Aarhus
ARTISTS AND PERFORMERS AT SPOR 2017 ALEXAN DE R KH U B E EV (R U, 1986) studied classic and electronic composition at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and even before he graduated from the conservatory Alexander’s works had been performed by a wide range of Russian and international new music ensembles. Close collaboration between Alexander Khubeev and the Russian ensemble GAMEnsemble led to Alexander’s appointment as composer in residence for the ensemble in 2011, resulting in a thorough, intense exploration of the relation between work and performance. When Alexander Khubeev composes, it is often with great curiosity regarding new performative techniques and materials. He uses and explores classical as well as completely new, self-built instruments to discover new timbres, pitches or textures in music. ANNA JALVING (DA, 1991) is a Danish contem porary violinist, composer and performer, educated from the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus and the British Columbia Academy of Music in Vancouver, Canada. She has worked with a wide range of composers, including Simon SteenAndersen, Francois Sarrain, Allan Gravgaard Madsen and Line Tjørnhøj and collaborates with the artistic collectives coOPERAtion – Operatic Mass Actions, Ensemble PEGASUS and Duo Sakham / Jalving as a musician and composer. As a soloist, she explores the boundaries between classical, contemporary and improvisational music. Anna is an active board member of AUT – Aarhus Unge Tonekunstnere, where she arranges various concerts and cultural events. BENT SØRENSEN (DK, 1958) is one of the most interesting Danish composers of his generation. He initially made his mark with a number of chamber music pieces, but during the 1990s also with a growing number of works for large orchestras, including The Echoing Garden (199092), Sterbende Gärten (1992-93, awarded with the Nordic Council Music Prize), and Birds and Bells (1995). Of the few vocal pieces Bent Sørensen has written, the opera Under himlen is
his main work so far. His instrumental and vocal pieces are full of drama and images to a quite unusual degree. This means that his work is at once quiet and present, partly in the shadows and full of tinkling movement, like memories from a vanished past, intruding into the here and now. It is music which often seems to thematize the act of reminiscence, either consciously or unconsciously. B E RG RÚN SNÆ BJÖR NSDÓTTI R (IS, 1987) works to recreate perceived metaphysical struc tures based on empirical relations and caus ality. Her work has been performed in the UK, Australia and widely in Scandinavia by groups such as The Oslo Philharmonic (NO), Decibel (AUS) and The Iceland Symphony Orchestra (IS), for occasions such as the Tectonics Music Festival Glasgow and Reykjavík, Cycle Music and Art Festival, Only Connect and Nordic Music Days. As a performer she has a diverse background, having been a touring and recording musician for the Icelandic bands of Sigur Rós and Björk, as well as being a performer of new music. She is a member of composer’s society S.L.Á.T.U.R., and also serves as the Icelandic chairman for the board of Young Nordic Music Festival (UNM). She is currently based in Oakland, CA where she is finishing a MA degree in composition at Mills College. BRIGITTA MUNTENDORF (DE, 1982) is a free lance composer, teacher of composition and art director of the Ensemble Garage in Cologne and Vienna. During her studies, she founded the Ensemble Garage to create an independent platform for musicians, composers and artists of different professions to develop new works and concert formats, through the process of collective and cooperative rehearsing. Besides her close relationship to Ensemble Garage she has worked with a wide range of ensembles, including Ensemble Mosaik, oh-Ton ensemble, Asko / Schönberg ensemble, PHACE, Calefax, Decoder ensemble, and Klangforum Wien. In her compositions, Brigitta Muntendorf often works with the translation of social phenomena into music by exploring rhizomatic settings, which has led to the establishment of the term “Social Composing”. This term and practice is mirrored in her different music theatres, composed in
collaboration with Thierry Bruehl for the Pocket Opera Festival in Salzburg 2011-2015, in forever overhead (Biennale Munic), iScreen, YouScream! as well as the Public Privacy series for solo per former, youtube-performers and electronics. CAROLI N E LOU ISE M I LLE R (US, 1988) is currently studying a PhD in composition at the University of California. Most of her works and artistic practice deal with a range of reoccurring themes and her fascination with tactility, affect, sociality, wildness, excess, violence and dreams. Sensuous aspects, and in particular tactility, play an important role in Caroline’s artistic processes, and sometimes this leads to somewhat peculiar methods, such as seeking inspiration for and composing new works while blindfold. She feels her way to interesting instruments, materials and sensuous composition, rather than just hearing or seeing them. Caroline is often inspired by social interactions, and she uses the contrasts of the social reality as material for powerful and transitional sound works, ranging from the serene to the disruptive and noisy. CHRISTIAN WINTHER CHRISTENSEN (DK, 1977) is a Danish composer, strongly conceptual in nature and often working with absurd elements. At the same time, his works often play with elements or quotations from older classical music. The greater part of his ensemble pieces have been played by skilled foreign ensembles specializing in new music. Even though he plays with absurd and ironic elements in his orchestral and ensemble works in order to give the music a certain edge and charm, these elements never detract from the work being taken seriously. EA BORRE (DK, 1985) is a Danish artist and organ builder, a graduate of the Jutland Art Academy and Frobenius & Søn organ building activity. She builds mechanical sculptures in both a sculptural and a musical idiom. The small sculptures made of paper and cardboard are run by engines and they appear as symphonic works, with their own distinct movements and compositions. Besides from exhibiting her works, Ea collaborates and performs with electronic composers, such as Sandra Boss and Mikkel Pihl. Together they build installations of home-built musical instruments,
transformed organs and mechanical sculptures, which set the frame for wondrous performances. EGYPTIAN FEMALES EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SESSION (EG) is a music collective consisting of the four women Asmaa Azouz, Shrouk El Zomor, Jacqueline George, and Yara Mekawei. For years now they have been collectively and individually intertwined within the world of sound art, noise, and experimental music. Each of the five musicians are actuallydirect musical descendants of the brilliant sound artists and curator, Ahmed Basiouny who tragically lost his life while protesting in Cairo during the January 2011 revolution. With the use of tone generators, pitch and timbral deconstructions, jazz structures, field recordings and layers upon layers, this project is a true testament to free and creative expression – a beautifully orchestrated and out rageous experiment. ENSEMBLE GARAGE (DE) is a Cologne-based ensemble founded by composer Brigitta Munten dorf as a platform for musicians, comp osers and other artists to explore and display new ideas, concepts, and works. Since its creation, the ensemble has focused on bringing the works of younger composers to life through the process of collective and cooperative rehearsing. Through its work, the ensemble seeks to answer questions about ‘our’ generation: Who does it consist of? Where does it congregate or belong? What does it think and do? What does it use and create, and, most importantly, hear and want others to hear? FILOMENA KRAUSE (DE, 1988) works as a performer and costume designer. She studied co stume design in Hamburg and has worked on several movie and theatre productions around Hamburg, Zürich and Jena. As a perf ormer, she has previously collaborated with Leo Hofmann and Benjamin van Bebber, on The Reply at A / D /A Festival and Kampnagel Hamb urg. JAGODA SZMYTKA (PL, 1982) is a Polish com poser, performer and artist based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. With a background in philosophy, art history and composition, her artistic practice is highly multidisciplinary, using multiple formats across different media, genres and aesthetics.
She combines elements of music, performance and fine arts, with an open mind towards new materials, styles and expressions. Szmytka embeds art in life, and her works are explicitly concerned with presenttime features of human life, including society and identity, communication and media, living and inhabiting time and space. Her works often play with idioms of the millennial generation, while using tools of advertisement, entertainment and commerce – often with clear references to modern pop culture. Beside her solo activities, Jagoda Szmytka is founder and one of the leading figures of the cultural activism group “PLAY Plattform” and founder of the art-pop band “ENTER Collecthief”. JEPPE ERNST (DK, 1985) is currently doing his postgraduate studies in composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Ernst’s compositions often ask the most fundamental questions about the phenomenon of music. In his consistent perspective, music is not sound and /or tones, but movements and (social) interaction in the fullest sense. Thus, his music expresses an exploration of “the action of music” from different angles. KATRINE MØLLEBÆK (DA, 1983) is a musician, composer and cultural entrepreneur. As a composer she has worked with artists such as Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Heidi Hove. She is also the founder and artistic director of the festival LAK, which seeks to represent and explore Nordic sound art outside of the institutional and traditional frames of art. Besides LAK, Katrine Møllebæk has worked with a wide range of festivals and exhibitions, among others at the Venice Biennale, Wundergrund, Copenhagen Jazz Festival and Roskilde Festival. LENIO LIATSOU (GR, 1975) is a Greek pianist who specializes in new music, having performed countless premieres of new works. She has worked with composers such as Peter Eotvos, Helmut Lachenmann, Beat Furrer, Manos Tsangaris and Georges Aperghis. Her work and interests, however, are particularly focused on the development of new forms of art which leads her to work not only with composers, but also with directors, actors and dancers. She is a founding member and pianist of the Greek contemporary music ensemble dissonArt.
LEO HOFMANN (CH/DE, 1986) composes and performs works for music theatre, sound per formances and experiments with audio drama formats. His works focus on the voice as an aural and performative event, as well as the search for haptics and physicality in music. Since Leo Hofmann finished his Master in Contemporary Arts Practice and graduated from the University of Bern, he has composed and created a wide range of works within experimental music theatre, including the piece UNGEDULD , and he has received several prizes and grants, including the Giga-Hertz Encouragement Prize of ZKM Karlsruhe and the Medienkunstpreis Oberrhein. With the system wind.attach (2011), sensuous headphones with both sound and air for the ears, and the work Pachinko Playalong (2014), an audiovisual performance, Leo Hofmann has explored new (digital) music interfaces; an artistic area of interest, characteristic of many of his works. MANOS TSANGARIS (DE, 1956) is a composer, drummer and installation artist, and one of the most important representatives of experimental music theatre of today. His compositions are internationally acclaimed and have been performed at many renowned festivals and theatres. In 2009 he was appointed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, and in the same year, elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (director of the music department in 2011). He has been a member of the Sächsische Akademie der Künste since 2010. Since the 1970s, Manos Tsangaris has repeatedly taken performance conditions to be an essential theme of his compositional work, expressed in different artistic formats. He has always worked to expand and refine the use of media in his composition and craft, and his main focus is on how various human areas of perception are linked to one another in art works – and how they can be developed so as to converge. MARTIN ANDREAS HIRSTI-KVAM (NO, 1991) is a composer who works in different fields of expression, from acoustic ‘concert music’ to more conceptually oriented works using electronics and visual elements – always in an attempt to give new perspectives to what constitutes music, listening and live performance.
MATTH EW ROG E RS (G B, 1975) is a British composer who creates musical works for and in collaboration with leading instrumentalists, ensembles and technologists. His work covers a wide range of pieces and installations for concert halls, theatres, galleries, and public spaces. Matthew Rogers has been artist in residence at the Southbank Centre, London and Tokyo Wonder Site, and he was the first ever composer to be commissioned by London’s Art on the Underground, working together with the London Sinfonietta. Matthew Rogers’ open minded approach to new genres, stylistic elements and formats is reflected in his eclectic span of works, while some of his latest works The Virtues of Things and La Celestina explore the grandiose opera format. MURAT ÇOLAK (TR, 1984) is a Turkish composer, artist and producer, currently living in Boston, USA where he is pursuing doctoral studies in music at the Boston University School of Music. The artistic practice of Murat Çolak covers a wide range of works for live performers and electronics, and at present he is collaborating with Distractfold Ensemble (UK), Ensemble Dal Niente (US), Wet Ink Ensemble (US), Marek Poliks (US), Christian Smith (US/NL), Scenatet (DK), Vertixe Sonora (SP), Meitar Ensemble (IL), and Ensemble Mise-en (US), and others. NICO SAUER (DE, 1986) works with electronic music, video, performance art, and theatre. In 2015 he completd a Bachelor’s degree in composition at the University of Music in Karlsruhe, and is currently studying a Master in composition at the University of Music in Dresden, under the guidance of professor Manos Tsangaris and professor Franz-Martin Olbrisch. The works of Nico Sauer are characterized by challenging and endangering traditional perceptions of art, by incorporating antagonisms and contradictory elements which provoke new perspectives on what art is and is capable of, for example. His works NeueMusik24-TV , Neue Musik für Afrika (contemporary music for Africa ), and Love Me depict and explore in their individual ways the contradiction between contemporary experimental music and the commercial and highly monetizable product.
POING (NO) started playing together in 1999, and have been one of the leading ensembles for contemporary music in Scandinavia ever since. They have played in clubs and concert halls in most European countries, the US, China and Japan, giving more than a hundred world premieres. The three musicians are among the world’s top performers on their instruments, both as interpreters of notated music and improvisation. Their unique flexibility results in many untraditional commissions by composers and festivals that go beyond the usual interpretation, interaction and dissemination of contemporary music. SANDRA BOSS (DK, 1984) is a composer and sound artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. In her work, elements of electronic music, classical music and sound art are combined using sound sources as diverse as antique tone generators, hearing test machines and church organs. Sandra is part of the sound art duo MASKINEL TERAPI and a member of the artist collective Vontrapp. She has performed at numerous festivals in Denmark and internationally, including the OHNO festival at Café Oto (UK), Spor Festival (DK), Klangkunst Festival (DE) and LAK – Festival for Nordic Sound Art (DK). SCENATET (DK) is recognized as one of the most innovative and experimental ensembles for music and art in Europe. Moving within a cross-genre field of music, drama, happenings, and in areas with yet undefined genres, the ensemble strives to present conceptual art works of the highest quality, also by initiating close collaborations with composers, directors, artists and filmmakers. Founded in 2008 by artistic director Anna Berit Asp Christensen, SCENATET perform for a broad and diverse audience and rarely in the same place or context twice. They design every concert individually and describe themselves as creators of conceptual art works and discovery processes in which music plays one of many roles. Highly visible internationally, SCENATET has toured much of the world, having performed at traditional concert venues as well as in unexpected, often public places. SCENATET is not a traditional ensemble at all, but rather a multifaceted and unique unit within the field of the contemporary arts.
SCENATET is one of the two new music ensembles in Denmark who receive multi-year support from the Danish Arts Foundation. STE PH E N U PSHAW (US, 1988) is always in search of new musical horizons, and since making his concert debut at the age of seventeen he has won several competitions and played at festivals all over the world. He is a noted interpreter of contemporary music and a passionate chamber musician, and has toured the USA, Europe and Asia with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields and its music director. Stephen also takes great interest in synthesizing music with other fields and has helped realize collaborative projects with the Boston Architectural College, Transport Theatre Company, Rambert, and Parasol Unit Art Space. TOMAS ESPEDAL (NO, 1961) made his debut as a writer in 1988 with the novel En vill flukt af parfumer , and since then he has revisited and reshaped the novel genre with his many personal and poetic books, most recently with the novel Året , about the changing seasons, transformation and movement. Based on his own life, he writes novels which lean on genres such as autobiography, poetry, short story, essay, travel descriptions and diary, and is probably best-known for Gå. Eller kunsten å leve et vilt og poetisk liv (2006) and Imot kunsten (2009), which were both nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. The authorship of Espedal constitutes a long, coherent work about being a human being, a man of the walk and a writer. VIVIAN N E SYDN ES (NO, 1974) is Director of Music in Oslo Cathedral where she is conductor and artistic director of Oslo Cathedral Choir. She has led the premiere performances of a number of works by such composers as Olav Anton Thommessen, Ståle Kleiberg and Ola Gjeilo and helped to develop exciting new concepts of concert performance. Sydnes is appointed professor of choral conducting at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo where she is responsible for the bachelor degree in conducting. She is frequently used as an instructor on courses for choirs and conductors both in Norway and abroad, and is engaged as guest conductor by the Norwegian Soloist Choir.
YANNICK HOFMANN (DE, 1988) is an inter disciplinary media artist and electroacoustic composer. His musical compositions oscillate between Music Concréte, Noise and Soundscape. In addition to artistic contributions for international festivals like Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, conferen ces and symposiums, Hofmann has presented pieces within the frameworks of the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the Ars Electronica and the ZKM. YING-HSUEH CHEN (TW, 1983) is a Copenhagenbased musician and thinker. She mostly performs as a contemporary percussionist, sometimes as a pianist and composer, and when the mood comes, as a visual artist. Although being multi-faceted, when exploring percussion at the age of 11, she intuitively knew that she was going to stick to it for the rest of her life. Subconsciously she might have already sensed that percussion has tremendous potential for expression, combining her earlier learnings from visual art, dance, and classical music. YULIA MIGUNOVA (RU, 1984) graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory in 2009. Since 2006 she has been a member of Cantando string quartet, winning numerous international music competitions in Germany, France, and Greece. Since 2011 Yulia (both as soloist and as a member of different ensembles) has participated in a wide range of contemporary music festivals, collaborating with soloists and composers from Russia, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Italy, and others. ZENO VAN DEN BROEK (NL, 1982) is a Dutchborn, Copenhagen-based composer and artist, working in a multi-sensory way to research and express notions of spatial awareness. In his compositions he explores the relation between musical forms, structures and auditive spatiality, drawing inspiration from architecture, mathematical and physical concepts. Van den Broek’s live performances combine and synthesize the visible and the audible. Sound and projections merge with the existing architecture of the venue, creating a new and fluid spatial reality. His installations are often location-specific, utilizing and intensifying the existing visual and acoustic
qualities of the site. Zeno van den Broek has been commissioned work by Non-Fiction, Gaudeamus Foundation and The Old Church of Amsterdam. He has presented work at various venues and festivals such as Incubate Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, CTM Vorspiel and Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Among other places, his work has been presented at VPRO Vrije Geluiden, Sedition and TBC, Los Angeles. ÅRHUS SINFONIETTA (DK) was founded in 1990 by members of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. Since their establishment, the ensemble has marked itself out as one of Denmark’s leading ensembles for contemporary music, but with a repertoire that extends beyond contemporary music alone. One of the top priorities of the ensemble is to interpret original music from all times and places in an original and artistic manner. ØSTEN MIKAL ORE (DK, 1967) originally earned his degree in guitar from the Academy of Music in Oslo and in Odense. He later studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus with Bent Sørensen and Karl Aage Rasmussen as his teachers. His music has been performed at various festivals including Discover Denmark, NUMUS, Suså, Festival Archipel and Purcell Room. At SPOR he works closely with the students at SPOR New Music School. Participating students from The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and Malmö Academy of Music: METTE NIELSEN (DK, 1985) began her studies in composition in 2007, and she will be graduating this summer from the soloist class at The Royal Academy of Music, playing her debut concert. Right now, in her work she is inspired by childhood memories, using songs, toys and others objects from her long gone childhood. LASSE DAN HANSEN (DK, 1991) has studied a BA in composition at The Royal Academy of Music and from autumn 2017 on he will be studying at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. As a composer, he insists on
creating musical experiences, which cannot easily be explained or perceived, often placing the audience in the middle of music, that pursues the fantastic. KLAVS KEHLET HANSEN (DK, 1993) is a thirdyear BA-student in composition at The Royal Academy of Music. As a composer, he is very interested in the fusion of electronic and acoustic sounds. LASSE WINTERBOTTOM (DK, 1989) is a secondyear student of composition at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. “In my imagi nation, music is a ship that can take me on ex plorative journeys. Composition is the attempt to find my way back home, so I can tell everyone about my explorations and experiences”, Lasse says. DANIEL MÖLLÅS (SE, 1993) is a second-year BA-student in composition at Malmö Academy of Music, where he composes music of several different characters; traditional as well as graphic notation, electroacoustic music etc. One of the most important issues for Daniel is to create material by simple methods and to form music by mixing control with chance.
SPOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL PARTNERS FOR CONTRIBUTING TO SPOR FESTIVAL 2017 ! COLLABORATORS Aarhus 2017, Aarhus Musikskole, Art Weekend Aarhus, Danish Composer’s Society, Den Kreative Skole Silkeborg, DOKK1, ECLAT Festival, Edition Wilhelm Hansen, Ensemble Garage, Exhibition space SPANIEN19C, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Godsbanen, Malmö Academy of Music, Kulturskolen Skanderborg, Kunsthal Aarhus, littlebit GbR, LYNfabrikken, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Connecting Spaces Hong Kong-Zurich – Zurich University of the Arts, Pappagallo, Randers Musikskole, SNYK, SCENATET, TAPE, Teater Refleksion, Teater Katapult, The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus / Aalborg, The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Åbne Scene, Århus Sinfonietta FUNDERS Aarhus 2017 Foundation, Aarhus Kommune Kulturforvaltning, Augustinus Foundation, Danish Composer’s Society’s Production Pool & Koda’s Funds for Cultural Purposes, Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten, FFUK, Goethe Institut Dänemark, Kong Christian Den Tiendes Fond, Kunst Stiftung NRW, Music Norway, Nordisk Kulturfond, Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen, SNYK, Sonning Foundation, The Danish Arts Foundation, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Solistforeningen af 1921, Ticket to Future Festivals, Tuborg Foundation, Wilhelm Hansen Foundation SPONSORS Blockbuster, Hanegal, Perto, Ration, Retap, Sweet Intentions, Søbogaard