UTOPIAS – Radical Interpretations of Iconic Works for Percussion

UTOPIAS – Radical Interpretations of Iconic Works for Percussion

Kjell Tore Innervik performs Morton Feldman’s The King of Denmark and Iannis Xenakis’s Psappha, exploring the intimate performing space with large format recording techniques, engaging the listener in immersive audio. The Xenakis was recorded twice: once from the perspective of an intimate listener, and a second time literally “over-head”, giving a first-persona perspective. The difference not only in microphone technique but also in the performer’s state of mind and how he projects his playing has a profound impact on the listening experience.

Radical Interpretations of Iconic Musical Works for Percussion (2013–2017) was an interdisciplinary artistic research project hosted at the Norwegian Academy of Music (2013–2017) in collaboration with the Oslo Academy of the Arts, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Westerdals Oslo ACT and 2L through the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme.

The beauty of the Recording Arts is that there is no fixed formula and no blueprint. It all comes out of the music. Every project starts out by digging into the score and talking with the composer, if contemporary, and the musicians. It is not our task as producers and engineers to try to re-create a concert situation with all its commercial limitations. On the contrary, we should make the ideal out of the recording medium and create the strongest illusion, the sonic experience that emotionally moves the listener to a better place.

A utopia, a non-existent place, is a projection where there are no constraints of practicality, nothing to hold you back. Such is our approach to the music on this album. In each piece of music we endeavour, using all the resources at out disposal, to unite the composer, performer, recording artist and listener, and to take them at least some of the way to a utopia. We envisage him or her experiencing a whole series of small-scale moments that offer a projection of the music where there are no constraints, and where the experience aspires to a kind of mini-utopia. It therefore seemed fitting to use the Greek symbol µ, often used as a prefix denoting smallness, in a typographical “subtitle” to this album: µtopias