jorgenkarlstrom.com

Composing

admin — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:18:27 +0000

To compose is to focus.

One more new Recovery Injection song!

admin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:34:55 +0000

Recovery Injection – New song from our upcoming album

admin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:43:25 +0000

Performance of Facepiece

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:20:18 +0000

Last friday Silje Aker Johnsen performed my piece Facepiece for soprano, electronics and video.
What a great musician she is! Thanks alot Silje!

The Blank Spaces – CD with music for piano

admin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:22:50 +0000

As of now, the Blank Spaces a CD (and also the title of my piece) with music for piano played by Kristian Lindberg, is out on iTunes, amazon, e-music, 24/7, and Spotify. Everywhere you can get digital music.

Pieces by Jan Erik Mikalsen, Julian Skar, Ørjan Matre, and me of course.

Check it out! Or even better: Buy it immediately!

The Blank Spaces by Kristian Lindberg – Download The Blank Spaces on iTunes

Send me a mail if you want to buy physical copies or need a free copy for reviews: jorgen [attttt] jorgenkarlstrom.com

Concert with Arditti

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:19:12 +0000

Two days after the concert. I’m incredibly happy how the concert (and my piece in particular) went. NRK recorded the concert and will broadcast it tuesday sept. 21st at 1930h. You can hear it at nrk.no.

Last time they recorded a piece of mine, the recording was a complete disaster due to some technical problems, but I’m sure it is better this time.

Check it out!

NO ART – for amplified string quartet

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:49:03 +0000

NO ART is the event where I finish of with music. It is pure method, no art, and no aesthetics. From now till then everything I make is purely mechanical work. If the result is sound, the sound is only a bi-product of the mechanics.

Don’t put too much emphasis on it, but not too little either. It’s a system just as void of and as full of meaning as the moon orbiting earth, and the earth orbiting the sun. I can cry watching the flowers blossom, the suns reflections bouncing off of the ocean, the waves breaking against a cliff.

Appreciate it or not, it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t. Just don’t think it’s art. It is. NO ART.

Premiere at the Ultima festival – september 14th 1900h, Slottskapellet, Oslo, Norway – the Arditti Quartet

the River Styx

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:07:40 +0000

I just finished a small piece for string sextet commissioned by Musikk i Finnmark and Ensemble Noor.

I’ve called it the River Styx, named after the river that, according to greek mythology, separates the world from the underworld, and the living from the dead. It’s not a programatic piece. The title is more meant to suggest how even the most immamentely contradictive and abstract things, like life and death, can be both linked and separated with a simple idea, like a river.

A composer needs both to connect and separate musical material in much the same way.
How I do this in practical musical terms, how I link and how I separate ideas that at the same time are different and alike, is ultimately what the River Styx is all about.

First performance is may 17th in St. Petersburg in Russia.

If you happen to be there, come check it out.

the Next Months

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:20:33 +0000

In the next six months I’ll hopefully be finishing a few projects that for some reason all have been postponed, delayed or drowned in other work:

- Finally going to finish a guitar piece commissioned by Thomas Kjekstad.

- The work with the string quartet is comming to an end, and will be performed next year by the Arditti quartet

- Saxophone concerto sort of, to be performed by Oslo Sinfonietta next year if everything comes together. The idea for this project was conceived about five years ago, so it’s about time I get it out of my mind.

- Piece for solo voice. I’ve been wanting to write something for Silje Aker Johnson for a long time. She’s just a brilliant singer, and finally I’ve cleared some time in my calendar to do it.

- Project with the Copenhagen Art Ensemble, was supposed to happen in 2009, but as you probably know, the three Ts: things take time.

The piece I was supposed to work on this spring, a large piece for orchestra for the Oslo Philharmonic, is probably beeing pushed one year into the future. Haven’t decided if it’s a good or a bad thing.

Clean slate

admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:26:07 +0000

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Starting anew. Everything must go.
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