Dokkhuset / March 7, 2020 @ 20:30 / TICKETS
GYRID NORDAL KALDESTAD [no] / HILDE MARIE HOLSEN [no]
Holsen and Kaldestad ́s soundscapes grow out of small, amplified sounds of metal, water and wood, trumpet, voice and words. Their sounds build up massive textures of ambient sounds mixed with crackling and whispering sounds. They had their first performance at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in November 2019.
Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad is a composer from the island of Stord on the west coast of Norway. Her background is in improvisation and electroacoustic music, working with voice / song, live electronics, field recording and text writing for use in songs and installations. She has been working as a composer and musician with theatre and dance performances where live electronics and electroacoustic soundscapes has been a key part of the expression.
Gyrid is concerned with the relationship between the pure acoustic sound and various degrees of processing. Her main focus is working with sound and text in different forms (installations, concerts, improvisation), and is using custom made amplified objects of different kinds as instruments and loudspeakers. Her collaborators in recent years include commissions from the Montreal based percussion quartet Architek Percussion, and the London- based violinist Mira Benjamin, collaborative projects with Are Lothe Kolbeinsen and Anne Hytta in her trio Kaldestad, and the project Processing the surroundings with composers Tine Surel Lange and Kristin Bolstad. In November 2019 she started as an Artistic Research Fellow at NTNU, Institute for Music, department of Music Technology.
Norwegian Hilde Marie Holsen has carved out something very particular and niche in music. Processing her trumpet in the electronic realm, she blends the mournful tone of
the brass instrument with the explorative field of electronic music to make music that lists somewhere between jazz, the contemporary and drone music. Holsen’s music has unpicked the frayed boundaries of traditions, calling in a new generation of artists that abandoned stale and repetitive conventions in favour of establishing something unique, in the realms of contemporary music.
Holsen’s debut album «Ask» was released on the Norwegian label Hubro in 2015, and hit the shelves with critical acclaim from amongst others The Guardian, The Wire and The Quietus. Since then, she’s gone on to perform on a number of world stages, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians, while also continuing her work in the recorded field. In 2018, Holsen followed up with her second solo album, «Lazuli», also released on Hubro, and was claimed to be «an almost shockingly complete musical statement».
Hilde Marie Holsen has played at numerous festivals and venues such as Punkt festival (NO), Ultima Contemporary Music Festival (NO), 12Points (Ir/Es), OsloJazz (NO), Rewire (NL) and London Jazz Festival (UK), as well as toured in Europe with concerts in a.o. Italy, UK, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Germany, both as a solo artist and together with musicians and bands such as FOOD, Morten Qvenild, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Sarah-Jane Summers, Lynn Cassiers, Samuel Rohrer, Silent Fires and Bilayer.
Hilde Marie Holsen has also had the chance to work with different commissions; in 2017 she worked with two commission pieces for two different festivals – Ultima Contemporary Music Festival and Førdefestivalen. Holsen has also composed music for art movies, and in 2019 she composed and performed a piece with the Acousmonium at inaGRM, Paris.