Borealis : Talking Experiments

A fantastic mix by KADAPAT – an experimental gamelan project consisting of Yogi and Barga, based on Bali in Indonesia, made for Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway and community radio station Vers Libre. Indonesian duo KADAPAT is characterised by their hybrid identities between the balinese traditions and legends, the technological urbanity of the millennial generation a...

Composer Tze Yeung Ho gives an insight in to the story, motivation and process of the making of his new opera Nara – imperial decline, belonging, and composing in a «third space» all feature in this behind the scenes conversation with artistic director Peter Meanwell. Nara premieres 12th March 2025, at Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. Tickets: https://www.borealisfes...

As Borealis celebrates its 20th anniversary we ask whether festivals still hold any power through the act of gathering and intense engagement, or whether it’s time for the idea of festival to change? What can a festival be and what challenges will it face in terms of aesthetics, politics and sustainability? Leading the conversation will be BBC Radio 3 journalist and author Kate Molleson, and joini...

In this episode of Talking Experiments, host Jennifer Torrence and artist Espen Sommer Eide go deep into Espen’s new work The Waves, which will premiere at Borealis 2022. He discusses how The Waves explores some of the key ideas returning again and again in his work: language and music, building instruments, the form of the album, improvisation, collaboration, and presence and absence. Espen Somme...

In this episode of Talking Experiments, host Jennifer Torrence and composer Kristine Tjøgersen discuss how she draws inspiration from nature in the creation of her recent works, whether that inspiration is in the form of sound, movement, data, patterns, or behaviours. She shares with us her compositional processes, including how she develops her inventive sound palette, and how she collaborates to...

In this episode of Talking Experiments, host Jennifer Torrence chats to composer Catherine Lamb about her desire to create pieces that evoke a sense of collective intensity among musicians; about how, as a young composer, she found a sense of belonging through rational intonation; and about how she conceptualises listening and the perception of sound, and in particular the idea of sound as multi-d...

Meet musician and composer Andreas Borregaard in our podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021. Andreas Borregaard is a Danish musician, who plays the classical accordion, an instrument that few people link to classical music. Besides being a performer, he is working on his phD, “Just Do It! – Exploring the Musician’s Use of Bodily Performance”, he is a composer and a te...

Meet musician and composer Ricardo Odriozola in our podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021. Ricardo Odriozola is a Spanish musician and composer, who has been living in Norway since 1987 – a year in which he started to teach violin and chamber music at Bergen's Grieg Academy, where he also conducts a chamber orchestra and a sinfonietta. He performs and composes contem...

Meet composer and musician Ruth Bakke and visual artist Anne Marthe Dyvi in our new podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021. Ruth Bakke has composed for everything from brass bands, chamber music, and other orchestras and has been the organist at the Norwegian Church in Storetveit just outside of Bergen for 45 years. She has a fascinating story with studies in the USA...

Meet the three artists behind a new performance concert called PSST2 specially commissioned for Borealis 2021: The Bergen based drummers and composers Øyvind Skarbø and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde together with illustrator Fredrik Rysjedal in our new podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021. Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and Øyvind Skarbø are some of Norways most used drummers and composers...

Meet composer Raven Chacon in our new podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021. Raven Chacon is an artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona. He is a composer and performer of both chamber music and noise music, he also makes visual art and occasionally curates art exhibitions. He also runs his own record label and teaches music to young people in the Navajo Nat...

Composer Jana Winderen in conversation with Knut Korsbrekke from Havforskningsinstituttet and Geir Pedersen from Christian Michelsen Research Institute about what they have experienced from listening under water. Artist and composer Jana Winderen has spent her life listening under water, creating artworks that bring her into contact with the shifting and sometimes precarious lives of mammals, fish...

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. With Borealis artistic director Peter Meanwell, Australian curator Joel Stern discusses the intersection of the sonic and the political, as explored through the Australian curatorial platform Liquid Architecture. Framed by the context of two fundamental and ongo...

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. What role does art play in our understanding of the climate crisis, and what responsibility do our cultural institutions have? Borealis brings together researchers Thomas Spengler and Nele Meckler from the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Center for Climate...

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. In this episode we’re meeting composer George Lewis. From the 1970s as a member of the influential AACM in Chicago, through his pioneering work with electronic music to his large body of notated and improvised music, teaching and writing as a professor of Americ...

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. This episode is named Infrasonic: the politics, production and performance of electronic music. Louis Moreno, one of the curators from collective freethought is leading a conversation with musician Jlin, curator and musician Paul Purgas, Will and Freya from the...

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway. This episode features a conversation between British performer Elaine Mitchener and Dr. Temi Odumosu, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Malmö University in Sweden following the Scandinavian premiere of Elaine's work SWEET TOOTH. They discuss how music can r...