Alwynne Pritchard
DOG/GOD II

PROGRAMME ORDER:

1. Alec Hall - Misophonia
2. Ruben Sverre Gjertsen - With zitterings of flight released and twinglings of twitchbells
3. Eva Pfitzenmaier - Agility
4. Laura Bowler - Dog Brush (featuring video interview with visual artist Paula Rego)
5. Kaj Aune - Today I have been a bad dog, from now on will try to be better, more generous and kind towards others
6. Sigurd Fischer Olsen - Hand of Dog
7. Gundega Šmite - Sisyphus
8. Thorolf Thuestad - Nether
9. Dániel Péter Biró - And the Flesh (Uvasar) 

COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES:

Alec Hall is a composer based in New York City. His work attempts to re-imagine the possibilities of acoustic materials in the post-Avant-Garde musical landscape. Composing with forms of sonic representation to address urgent non-musical debates, his work is as aesthetically polycentric as it is politically engaged. He is the co-founder of Qubit and currently serves as its co-artistic director. Among numerous distinctions, he is a Guggenheim fellow, the current recipient of the Prix Jules Léger, and holds a doctorate from Columbia University.

Ruben Sverre Gjertsen is a Norwegian compoer based in Bergen, who studied at the Grieg Academy. His music has been performed around Europe by ensembles like Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Vortex, Lucerne Festival Academy, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Sinfonietta, Song Circus, and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart. He is currently working as an organist.

Eva Pfitzenmaier grew up in Germany, studied jazz vocals at the conservatory of Amsterdam and is based in Bergen since 2008. She works across artistic disciplines as a vocalist, performer, composer and writer a.o. with the solo project By The Waterhole, in collaboration with choreographers and with the production of own performances. Her music draws inspiration from contemporary, electronic and popular music as well as traditional music from all around the world. Eva explores how different artistic expressions can be combined in order to create a holisitc piece or performance and in her work she tries to find those short moments of instability and vulnerability which reflect the human condition.

Laura Bowler, described as “a triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice” (The Arts Desk) is a composer, vocalist and Artistic Director specialising in theatre, multi-disciplinary work and opera. She has been commissioned across the globe by ensembles and orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ROH2, Opera Holland Park, The Opera Group, Manchester Camerata, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), Ensemble Phace (Austria), Ensemble Linea (France) and Omega Ensemble (Australia).

Kaj Aune is a composer and artist from Norway. In addition to electronic music his works often includes different ways of incorporating visual and theatrical elements into performances that he himself likes to describe as the combination of a one man band with an opera of objects. 

“I do not like to write so much about my own music, but I do have an aesthetic tendency towards the old and worn, corrosiveness and decay. I use alot of pedal effects and samplers, and modular synths – mostly analog- and home-made string instruments and microphones. The focus is on distortion and muddling the sound by using the lower frequencies. I also love feedback and the overtone spectrum as a way of shaping and sculpting the sound.

Sigurd Fischer Olsen studied composition with Morten Eide Pedersen at the Grieg Academy in Bergen, Norway and with Mathias Spahlinger at the Hochschule fur Musík, Freiburg, Germany. He currently lives in Bergen, Norway and works as a freelance composer. He has also taught composition, music theory and music history at the Grieg Academy. He has worked extensively with experimental opera in the group Ursus Produksjoner where the traditional hierarchy between composer, librettist, scenographer, dramaturg and musicians is challenged and where everyone has to be involved in all parts of the production and where the musicians takes a visual and acting part on the stage. The projects include full scale operas, opera for children, opera installations.

Gundega Šmite is a Latvian composer, currently residing in Greece. While working in different genres, her biggest inspiration has always been human voice.  She has collaborated with Latvian, Swedish, Berlin Radio choirs, BBC Singers, among others. Her music is regularly performed worldwide, including festivals Klangspuren, London Ear, ISCM World Music Days. Šmite holds a doctoral degree (PhD) in Musicology for her thesis that concerns music and text relationship in the modern choral music.

Thorolf Thuestad is a sound artist, composer, sound designer, art and music technician. He co-directs the music-theatre company Neither Nor with Alwynne Pritchard and has worked extensively with stage arts, contemporary music, composition and film music. He is currently a research fellow in artistic research at the University of Bergen.

Dániel Péter Biró is Professor for Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. He studied in the U.S., Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Israel before receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004. From 2004 -2009 he was Assistant Professor and from 2009-2018 Associate Professor for Composition and Music Theory at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada. In 2010 he received the Gigahertz Production Prize from the ZKM-Center for Art and Media. In 2011 he was Visiting Professor at Utrecht University and in 2014-2015 Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. In 2015 he was elected to the College of New Scholars, Scientists and Artists of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dániel Péter Biró has been commissioned by prominent musicians, ensembles and festivals and his compositions are performed around the world.