New York based avant garde musicians perform illuminating works by five prominent composers associated with contemporary classical music in Denmark and by New York City based composer, MV Carbon. Innovative compositional approaches and extended techniques converge in an event that incorporates spatial elements, audience engagement, and collaborative interpretation.

Artistry and sound entwine seamlessly in a formulated discourse, transcending boundaries, converging in experimental resonance, illuminating one another. This vibrant exchange bridges distances, contributing to a nuance of synthesis, vibration, and orchestrated patterns, weaving and unfurling sensations and frequency.

Organized by MV Carbon and Lars Lundehave. Sponsored by Nordic Culture Fund and presented by Roulette.

Compositions by:
MV Carbon
Bára Gísladóttir
Jexper Holmen
Juliana Hodkinson
Mads Emil Dreyer
Ylva Lund Bergner

Performed by:
Laura Cocks
Zach Layton
Brian Chase
Samantha Sea Sea
MV Carbon

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.

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MV Carbon:
MV Carbon’s work focuses  on media manipulation, sound morphology and the transformative and interpretive interrelationship between sound, image, space, and place. Cello, magnetic tape, amplified objects, handmade instruments, electronics, and voice, are infiltrated with ambience, sensation, and sound masses.

Carbon has solo and collaborative records released on labels including Kill Rock Stars / 5RC, Atavistic Records, Discombobulate, Ecstatic Peace, Chaikin Records, Hanson, Load Records, No Fun Productions, Various Artists, and Veglia.

She has been awarded residencies from Bemis Center (NE), Clocktower Gallery (NY), EMS Elektronmusikstudion (SE), Issue Project Room (NY), Koncertkirken (DK), Pioneer Works (NY), Q02 (BE), and  Roulette (NY).

Bára Gísladóttir (1989, composer):
The works of Bára Gísladóttir are characterised by a deep and self-reflective calm, at times producing an almost meditative state in the music. In her pieces, time is as likely to move in circles as it is moving forwards towards a distinct goal.

Whether writing for acoustic instruments or electronics, Gísladóttir is especially concerned with the rich details of sounds. Thus, overtones, liminal registers and multiphonics play an essential part in her works, creating an atmosphere of slowly progressing mystery.’

Bára Gísladóttir studied at the Iceland University of the Arts, Conservatorio di musica “Giuseppe Verdi” di Milano and the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Jexper Holmen (1971, composer):
It may be unfair to label Jexper Holmen’s music with his own term ‘Chamber Punk’ because, as all labels, it only accentuate certain aspects of certain works and not the variety of it all. His approach to composing for classical instruments seems to be infused with the energy of punk and postpunk rock music – an energy based on brutal, ecstatic, noisy and abrasive impulses.

Often, Holmen is recklessly pursuing one extreme idea, pushing the sound and the musicians over the edge, hammering brutal tone clusters from the orchestra at the highest possible volume. This has given him the image of an enfant terrible, which he himself denounces. He explores extremes in order to extract ambiguous beauties and energetic ecstasies from them, not to play rebel in a world of self-content subtleties.

From chamber punk to nursery chamber, Jexper Holmen’s music is a thrilling experience, be it brutal or gentle, expressive or ambient, the intensity is remarkable.

Juliana Hodkinson (1971, composer and sound artist):
In her music, Hodkinson critically explores social relations within and outside of art, for example by including everyday objects in her works and, most recently, drawing on the audience as active participants in the performance situation, with the objective of questioning social, cultural and political relations in musical practice.

In Hodkinson’s work series Nothing Breaking the Losing (2016 – ongoing), the audience is invited into the performance situation itself and is thereby assigned a collective responsibility for realizing the work.

Juliana Hodkinson studied musicology and philosophy at King’s College Cambridge, Japanese at Sheffield University, and has written a PhD thesis at the University of Copenhagen on silence in music and sound art.

Mads Emil Dreyer (1986, composer):
Like glistening sculptures, Mads Emil Dreyer’s music exists as much in its own sure forms as in the listener’s individual response to them. His music creates conscious hinterlands in which detailed, focused sounds can be observed, like an artwork unfolding in time. His versatility and flexibility have made him a favourite on Copenhagen’s new music scene and far beyond it.

As interested in knobs and buttons as violins and flutes, Mads Emil Dreyer often sets up a dialogue between electroacoustic and acoustic entities. His music might use electronics to blur tonal harmonies, mimic acoustic sounds or place a fog around regimented instrumental robotics.

Mads Emil Dreyer studied composition at advanced postgraduate level at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He also read humanities at the University of Copenhagen and the University of California, Berkeley.

Ylva Lund Bergner (1981, composer):
Ylva Lund Bergner’s music is mostly written for smaller chamber ensembles, and often includes electronics that the musicians control themselves. She often focuses on dramatic music such as monodrama or chamber opera, text being an important inspiration for her work. In these pieces, the visual aspects of the performance also play an important role.

In some of her compositions she implements unusual folk instruments and home made objects as a way of creating a more personalised sound world. A central element in her music is the dynamic of getting the musicians to melt together, creating a single coherent body of sound.

Ylva Lund Bergner was born in Sweden. She studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. In 2005-06 she studied with Fabio Cifariello Ciardi at Conservatorio di Musica in Perugia, Italy, and in 2010-11 she studied at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Lyon, France, Robert Pascal & Michele Tadini.