FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The good old classical avantgarde composers of the fifthies and sixties did it: they 
created musical structures having room for the unforeseen and for improvisation. 
Young composers may still use such methods. Two significant Danish composers of an 
in between-generation are presented here, Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen and Henrik Ehland 
Rasmussen. They celebrate their 60th and 50th birthdays this year. And we have been 
so lucky as to  get the Polish elite ensemble Kwartludium to our country on this occasion.

Concerts take place on Friday 19. August at 7.30 PM and Saturday 20. August at 2.30 PM, 
in the Concert Church, Blågårdsgade 6A, 2200 Copenhagen N. Open Form Festival is a Nordic 
cooperation which works to make this form of composition more visible in concert life. 
Open composition certainly has its thrills for the audience.

Both composers have a substantial production behind them of open compositions, documented 
on CD, on the internet and in the series Edition Text & Graphix from the publishing house 
edition-s.dk. 

Bergstroem-Nielsen is known from among other things Postcard Music which during the 
seventies was sold on a postcard. While in this piece he endeavours to outline possible 
choices for performers and gently take them out into improvising, he has in his later 
works posed more specific tasks, dealing with the nature of the process and of the 
interaction. There are pieces (Around Corners and Mutual Prescriptions) which follow 
the "game piece" tradition. In these pieces, a set of playing rules allows musicians to 
determine the process - and the audience can follow how they make signals to each other. 
There are also solo pieces (Memory Pieces) based on free improvisation, but demanding the 
use of new kind of contrapuntal techniques. This does not fix what is played beforehand, 
but forces memory to work harder towards formulating overarching aspects of musical form. 
The audience may even try some of the musical principles theirselves in a few specially 
designated pieces. Regin Petersen (b.1980) appears as a guest composer,  also with a 
piece for ensemble ad libitum, of course.

Like Bergstroem-Nielsen, Henrik Ehland Rasmussen has a background in the composer-performer 
ensembles Intuitive Music Groups and Group for Intuitive Music. Working in such groups 
allows for taking the nescessary time to find the right compositional way of describing 
material, structure and interaction (notation and instructions, in other words). Music is 
tested out in practise all the time and may be critically revised.  A knife-sharp 
differentiation between different kinds of material is characteristic for Rasmussen,  
making his music clear and colourful. Further,  a handling of dramatic,  prolonged 
processes in an insightful way. - Particles of the Space is an example. Condensation and 
high intensity make way to light, floating sound phonomena at a later stage 
- however, certainly not before the first stage has been lived through. Another example 
is the political  piece Ministry of Employment, built aorund a central pompous and 
majestic character. Object of its satire is a bureaucratic system forcing unemployed 
people into meaningless activities. Krzysztof Knittel (b.1947), a significant Polish 
representative for open composition, appears here as a guest composer.

Kwartludium has a broad selection of open compositions in its repertory. They performed, 
among other places, at Warshaw Autumn Festival, and since 2009 they participated in the 
European Re:New collaboration.

The links below can tell more, and Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen can be reached on this mobile 
phone: +45 2820 5688.


www.intuitivemusic.dk/open11/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Copenhagen-Open-Form-2011/162621170468637


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