The Kalv Festival in early August 2024 will feature no less than four Gageego! performances.
It begins with the opening night’s premiere of the concert-long work Kaihogyo by Klaus Lang and ends with Sunday’s grand finale concert together with ensemble mosaic, Klaus Lang, Jonas Olsson, Chris Du Preez and the Kalv Choir under the direction of Mark Tatlow.
In between, Ragnar Arnberg on bass clarinet performs Emil Nilsson’s newly written work Dromo late Friday evening. On Saturday afternoon, flutist Anders Jonhäll participates as interpreter of Marcus Lundberg’s Snö, sken, minne.
Times and places
Thursday August 8, 20.30 church of Kalv Friday August 9, 23.00 church of Kalv Saturday August 10, 13.30 Kalv school house Sunday August 11, 12.00 church of Kalv
The first concert during Kalv Festival 2024 is a premiere of Klaus Lang’s kaihogyo for organ and ensemble. Gageego! performs together with the composer himself as organ soloist and the festival’s curator Mark Tatlow as conductor.
Klaus Lang
Klaus Lang is an Austrian organist and composer who has developed a distinctive musical language. With a conviction that beauty cannot be found in ornamented symbols, color spectacles or splendor – rather in shades of gray, in the imperfect and in traces of what has disappeared – and with a belief that beauty arises in the listener and not in the considered object, Lang creates a music that makes the listener turn their attention inward and see the beauty in itself. We encounter an approach that is most easily described as Buddhist. Not only in relation to sound, but also to life. Instead of imposing his meaning, Lang lets the musical vibrations become open questions, as if every impulse, every persevering or broken tone becomes a humble question of an existential nature. A music that defends itself against conveying a message and instead makes the listener move towards a contemplative state – a freedom.
Klaus Lang sees music as a free and independent acoustic object. In his music, he does not want to use sounds but rather let the sounds be explored and given an opportunity to develop its inherent rich beauty. Only when sound is allowed to be just sound can it be experienced as what it actually is: a temporal phenomenon – audible time. Klaus Lang views time as the composer’s genuine material, and at the same time as the fundamental content of music. According to his view, musical material is: time experienced through sound. The purpose of music is to create experiences of time through listening. Music is audible time.
Right after the release of Infiltrations, an album featuringthe music of with Madeleine Isaksson, Gageego! enters the recording studio again. This time, a recomposed trio by the composer Joakim Sandgren is on the music stand.
The work is written for three musicians and computer and is called “Ainsi formées”. A previous version of it was originally performed by Gageego! in December 2021. Sandgren has now rewritten the work, which after recording and mixing will be released on digital platforms later this year.
The recording takes place June 8-9 in Studio Element at Brew House in Gothenburg, with the composer himself as technician and producer.
Madeleine Isaksson’s work are a recurring feature at Gageego!’s concerts. Now we are finally presented a portrait of the composer with works from different phases of Isaksson’s production:
Infiltrations (2022)
Fibres (2004)
Sondes (2009)
Far … (2011)
Ici est ailleurs (1988–1989)
Besides Gageeego! featured guest musicians are Stefan Östersjö on guitar and Hans Hellsten on organ.
From the CD insert essay
The key words here are ‘map’, ‘colour’ and, especially, ‘drawing’. They suggest ideas to do with lines and relationships, as well as forms of movement and spontaneity: means of navigation and orientation, the connecting of points, and the articulation of vertical and horizontal space.
When one talks at greater length with the composer, these are the concepts that the conversation keeps coming back to. And although some aspects of Isaksson’s style and technique have evolved over the years – particularly her early use of microtones, which have been more or less absent from her music since the early 2000s – the fundamental 4 elements have remained relatively constant.
From Ici est ailleurs, from 1998, to Infiltrations, composed in 2022, this CD presents an oppor- tunity to examine the development and stability of those elements across almost the full span of Isaksson’s career.
Atmospheric soundscape
Producer Per Sjösten has created a three-dimensional and evocative soundscape that is particularly effective in the Dolby Atmos edition (Apple Music and Tidal). Also available in 24 bit lossless stereo.
György Ligeti Dix pièces pour quintette à vent • Sonate pour alto • Six Bagatelles Paul Hindemith Sonate für Violine solo, No 1 Intermezzo & Lied Pär Lindgren Stilla Franco Donatoni MIDI, sats 1 Morton Feldman The King of Denmark
Parts of the programme will be performed in the foyer of the Concert Hall.
Gageego! just returned from a most successful tour, the NordicMusicJourneys to Glasgow in a collaboration between Hebrides Ensemble, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and FST – Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare.
We loved our stay in Glasgow performing important chamber music works by these prominent Swedish composers. Enjoy these wonderful concert photos by photographer Anna Cokorilo.
Mårten Landström, Charlotta Grahn Wetter, Johan Stern, Ragnar Arnberg, Anders Jonhäll and Fredrik BurstedtPercussionist Jonas LarssonConductor Fredrik Burstedt not only conducted the program but also served as a moderator on our two concerts.Fredrik Burstedt conducting Gageego!Benjamin Stern explaining the musical journey of his work Hilma ScenesComposer Henrik Denerin in conversation with Fredrik Burstedt about his work collideYlva Fred explaining her work Motor MusicGageego! in performance of Ylva Fred’s work Motor MusicCon tutta forza! Madeleine Isaksson in action before Capsuled TimeFredrik Burstedt conducting Gageego!Composer Marie Samuelsson brought her work The Lion to Glasgow.Alfred Jimenez, composer of the flute, cello, piano-work With VoiceA prepared piano – can you spot the sound enhancement in the reflection on the lid?Gageego! in concert at the RSNO Centre, GlasgowComposer Mika Pelo taking a bow after the excerpt -performance of his longer work Abandoned.Violist and Scotsman Fraser Keddie in center-stageGageego! in concert at the RSNO Centre, Glasgow
“The virtuoso players of Gageego! demonstrated their familiarity with extended techniques on their instruments” writes The Herald, reviewing two recent concerts by Gageego!.
