Our annual cooperation with The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet on performing contemporary opera will in 2013 be Pagliacci on Stage in the Studio, as a part of the Opera’s on-going project The Opera Laboratory. This year we proudly present brand new music by the composers Olav Anton Thommesen, Risto Holopainen, Marius Neset and Ingar Zach.

The National Opera writes on their site:

The Opera Laboratory is the venue for development and production of contemporary opera.
Here composers are invited to develop new forms of expression and concepts using the resources of the Opera Laboratory. Sometimes the experiment in itself constitutes the final product, while other times the evolution of the project is extended, with the intention of developing a full-scale production.

PAGLIACCI ON STAGE IN THE STUDIO
This season we have chosen to bet everything on a single card: the Opera Laboratory’s resources are being applied to a project in which an invitation has been sent out to four well-known but extremely different composers. These are Risto Holopainen, Olav Anton Thommessen, Marius Neset and Ingar Zach. Their challenge will be to compose their respective musical commentaries on a work that is simultaneously being staged at the Main House: Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The composers will address their respective assignments, in which Holopainen is the role of the clown in the music and Thommessen’s the tabloid murder.

The musicians are Ingar Zach, Alessandra Rombolá and Esteban Algora from the trio O3 and musicians from the Oslo Sinfonietta, Norway’s oldest contemporary music ensemble. In the hands of artistic director and conductor Christian Eggen the ensemble has established a name for itself as the leading exponent of the genre in the Nordic region. The ensemble is organised as a musicians pool with musicians from the Oslo Philharmonic, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra and freelancers. The roles are cast with singers from the Norwegian National Opera’s soloist ensemble.

Premiere 15 March.

Also playing 16 and 17 March

Free entrance!

Oslo Sinfonietta has been invited to the prominent Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the UK’s largest festival of new and experimental music. We have joined forces with singers from The Norwegian Soloist’s Choir, and look forward to present an exciting Scandinavian program for an UK audience:

Simon Steen-Andersen: Black Box Music UK Premiere
Soloist: Håkon Mørch Stene

Ignas Krunglevicius: Gradients UK Premiere

 hcmf// writes on their site:

Norwegian contemporary supergroup Oslo Sinfonietta perform the UK premieres of two highly visual new works by Norwegian / Lithuanian composer Ignas Krunglevicius and Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen, whose Huddersfield debut was one of the highlights of hcmf// 2011. His piece sets at its centre percussionist whose hands are isolated inside a box containing a variety of noise-making devices and five highly sensitive microphones.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Music Information Centre Norway, the Norwegian Embassy, The Danish Arts Council, The Danish Arts Foundation, Danish Composers Society’s Production Pool / KODA’s Fund for Social and Cultural Purposes, Wilhelm Hansen Foundation and SNYK