A source for news on music that is challenging, interesting, different, progressive, introspective, or just plain weird

5:4 Reviews

Source: 5:4.

Ultima 2023 (Part 3)
The experience of Christina Kubisch‘s electromagnetic walk around Oslo’s library had a counterpart in her new vocal work, Strømsanger (“electrical singers”), premièred by Trondheim Voices. The piece originated in the electromagnetic sounds made by Trondheim’s tram system; these became the basis for transcriptions that Kubisch developed further. Lasting around 40 …

Dieter Ammann – Core – Turn – Burst & Unbalanced Instability
i wish i could remember who once said to me that composing was like a form of time travel. The finished composition has a certain duration, but while working on the piece, the composer can move freely, forwards and backwards through what we might call the “compositional spacetime”, in the …

Ultima 2023 (Part 2)
Two of my favourite elements of the Ultima festival are its sound walks and installations. To explore Trevor Mathison‘s From Signal to Decay Vol. 6 i walked across town to Atelier Nord, one of Oslo’s most chameleonic spaces. On this occasion its usually bright, open interior had been partitioned, with …

Ultima 2023 (Part 1)
Oslo’s annual contemporary music festival Ultima is currently in something of a transition, between outgoing artistic director Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen and incoming Heloisa Amaral, who took the helm in February this year. On the one hand, what i experienced during my three days there was broadly comparable to previous years, …


Discover more from

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.