Ketil Björnstad: The Nest

Ketil Björnstad: The Nest

• Hörproben
• Produktinfo

Ketil Björnstad

The Nest

• CD
• Erscheinungstermin: 3.5.2003
• Verfügbarkeit: Artikel am Lager

Detailinformationen

• Label: EmArcy, 2003
• Bestellnummer: 7530616

+ Anneli Drecker, Nora Taksdal u.a.

Produktinfo

The Nest is inspired by Eva-Maria Riegler's photograph of the same name. When Ketil Bjørnstad first saw the picture, it reminded him of the words of Norwegian author Jens Bjørneboe's "Happy is the man who has his room". There is a place for all artistic expression. By coincidence Bjørnstad was reading Hart Crane's (1899 - 1932) poetry, as he composed the music for the Riksteatret's and the National Theatre's production Undset, about the life of author and Nobel Prize-winner Sigrid Undset (1882 - 1949). Two more different author-personalities are hard to imagine. There is, however, a common thread in their approach to life - their existential search and continual fight for artistic challenge.

Parts of the music for The Nest were written for the Undset play, while the Crane songs and instrumental passages are completely new. Eva-Maria Riegler's photograph is both an illusion and a tangible expression. To be inspired by the extremities and collisions of the inner and outer room, is the creative artist's privilege. Sigrid Undset experienced huge personal tragedy in life. Her marriage was unhappy, her daughter mentally retarded, and her son Anders was shot in Gausdal during World War 2. The pain at times turned her into a bitter realist, but her Catholic faith saved her from misanthropy and despair. Not so Crane who died at sea on April 27th 1932; an apparent suicide, after struggling with warring parents, poverty, and discrimination as a homosexual. The music Ketil composed, inspired partly but not solely by these fates, is intended as melodic 'reconstruction's'. Long conversations with his close friend, composer and guitarist Terje Rypdal, during recent years, while they were touring as a duo and with The Sea all over the world, have given Ketil clearer insight into the possibilities of a melody at a time where the melodic elements are often reduced to fragments.

The collaborations with Terje Rypdal, David Darling and Jon Christensen in The Sea, and duo sessions with Terje and David have inspired his to progress further with melody, and at the same time, as on his previous album Grace, include the human voice. As a logical coincidence, Jon's wife Ellen Horn appears as Sigrid Undset in Tine Thomassen and Otto Holmlung's piece. Perhaps it is the bridge Hart Crane wrote about, that joins all of these elements together. There should be room for everyone in Eva-Maria Riegler's The Nest. And Crane's "Old Song" harmonizes as a backdrop.