Opening concert for the fourth edition festival for other music includes the full live ensemble version of Sarah Hennies experimental documentary/music work ‘Contralto’ and Catherine Lamb & Johnny Chang presenting their Viola Torros project.
Sarah Hennies performed a riveting solo as part of the Second Edition Festival for Other Music in 2017 and it's with much excitement that we welcome her back to Stockholm to present 'Contralto' an ambitious work for video, strings, and percussion that exists in between the spaces of experimental music and documentary. The piece features a cast of transgender women speaking, singing, and performing vocal exercises accompanied by a dense and varied musical score performed by a seven piece ensemble.
Henrik Olsson — Percussion
Johnny Axelsson — Percussion
Kristoffer Linder — Percussion
Anna Lindal — Violin
Elsbeth Bergh — Viola
My Hellgren — Cello
Johan Moir — Double Bass
"imaginative, resourceful, witty, defiant...haven't been so deeply moved by a new piece in ages." - Steve Smith, National Sawdust
When a transgender man begins taking testosterone it causes his vocal cords to thicken and his voice deepens and drops into the so-called 'masculine range'. It is not widely known, however, that trans women's voices are unaffected by higher levels of estrogen in the body. Being a woman with a 'male voice' creates a variety of difficult situations for trans women including prolonged and intensified dysphoria and higher risk of harassment and violence due to possibly exposing someone as trans unintentionally.
'Contralto' - defined in musical terms as 'the lowest female singing voice' - uses the sound of trans women's voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.
'Contralto' premiered at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY on November 30, 2017.
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work is primarily concerned with an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas of Fluid Radio described as "a highly sophisticated and refined performance technique...that starts and ends with listening and encourages a different way of listening from its audience."
Viola Torros is an ongoing research project by composer-performers Catherine Lamb and Johnny Chang, which seeks to realise and arrange the compositions of a pre-medieval composer, Viola Torros.
Viola T. was an anonymous composer who worked outside of the religious and academic establishments of her time. In her own practice, she documented her works in a minimally effective way, just enough to communicate with her fellow collaborators but barely enough to preserve a legacy for later generations of enthusiasts of her music.
The concept of 'research' referred to by the Viola Torros Project involves studies of various relevant musical styles of the pre-medieval period (arabic, byzantine and indian modes), and investigating possible evolution of melodic and harmonic developments as V. T. might have discovered. Choosing one aspect of such a musical style to focus upon, details are discovered and presented in an arrangement for two violas, often with additional augmentations.
In the music of Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, Washington USA), the mathematics of harmony are explored through the physicality of the material world. Lamb gives voice to crystalline structures of the harmonic series through subtleties of friction, pressure, breath, and bow changes that shape how the idealized harmonies speak.
Lamb is one of the most celebrated and in-demand composers of her generation. Her work has been commissioned by premiere new music ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Dedalus, and Ensemble Musikfabrik. Her writings and recordings are published in KunstMusik, Open Space Magazine, New World Records, Another Timbre, Other Minds, Sound American, and Sacred Realism.
Violinist-composer Johnny Chang engages in extended explorations surrounding the relationships of sound/listening and the in-between areas of improvisation, composition and performance. Based in Berlin from 2009 -2020, Chang relocated to his home country Aotearoa New Zealand in 2020.
Johnny is part of the Wandelweiser composers collective and in 2018, initiated a new framework for the presentation of creative research and performances, "Partitions & Resonances", aimed at encouraging collaborations between the varied disciplines of composition, musicology, historical research and performance. He currently collaborates with: Peter Ablinger, Jürg Frey, Antoine Beuger, Sam Dunscombe, Keir GoGwilt, Catherine Lamb, Klaus Lang, Mike Majkowski, Phill Niblock, Michael Pisaro-Liu, Derek Shirley, Germaine Sijstermans, Taku Sugimoto, Eric Wong.
Ever since he was the drummer and percussionist in legendary band gul3 (Yellow3 in English), Henrik Olsson have made great contributions to the field of experimental music in Sweden. As composer and improviser, his curiosity and open-minded musical thought has brought him to a rich world of musical textures, quite often realized electronically through amplified sounds and with silence as a natural part of the musical result.
My Hellgren lives in Göteborg, Sweden, and works as a cellist in many different contexts. She is mostly active in the scene of contemporary music and is a member of GAHLMM, Curious chamber players and Mimitabu.
My likes to work close with composers and has premiered solo and chamber music pieces.
My is educated at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and at the Academy of music and drama at the university of Gothenburg.