Category: Classical music

Tune in here on October 27-28 at 9:30PM ET for the Final Rounds

We’re coming to you from Calgary, Canada for the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition.

Three pianists have advanced to the Final Round, and will compete for $100,000 CAD and a comprehensive, three-year artistic and career development program valued at half-million dollars.

This year’s finalists are Rachel Breen (United States / age 26), Sasha Kasman Laude (United States / age 27), and Illia Ovcharenko (Ukraine / age 21).

The members of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition Second Jury are Michel Béroff (France), Earl Blackburn (United States), Katherine Chi (Canada / United States), Imogen Cooper (United Kingdom), Stewart Goodyear (Canada), IckChoo Moon (Korea), and Orli Shaham (Israel / United States).

THURSDAY OCTOBER 27 | 9:30PM (ET)

FINALS I | 2022 HONENS INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION

CALGARY, CANADA

On the first night of Finals, the three finalists will each perform a chamber music recital that includes a Mozart concerto with The Viano String Quartet + Sam Loeck (bass) and a selection of Schubert lieder with mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 28 | 9:30PM (ET)

FINALS II | 2022 HONENS INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION

CALGARY, CANADA

On the second night of Finals, each finalist performs a concerto (composed after 1791) with Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and guest conductor Jeffrey Kahane.

By Ryan Michaels
The Birmingham Times

It was at the age of 15 that Elias Hendricks III first felt his inspiration.

He remembers seeing a group of three Black tenors perform at the Alabama Theater in downtown Birmingham and wanting to be like that group – Three Mo’ Tenors just as he was beginning his own career as a budding singer in styles as varied as that group’s, which encompassed everything from soul and blues to opera.

“It was not only just the representation of them being Black men performing opera and also infusing it with our cultural, musical elements of gospel, blues and soul … it was just the ease in the way that they were able to do all of those things at once,” Hendricks said.

The next day, Hendricks was among a number of local students who were invited to participate in a master class with the group, where the singers further encouraged Hendricks.

“I remember when [the group] told me, ‘Hey, you can have a career at this. You sound great. I love your tone. You seem to have such command of this music,’ and I was like, ‘What? me, for real?’ That was a huge endorsement … as far as a confidence booster,” Hendricks said.

That inspiration led Hendricks to form Vox Fortura, the only Black male classical crossover quartet in the world, which will make its Birmingham debut at the Lyric Theatre on Nov. 6.

Hendricks said the group, which he put together in 2016 to compete on “Britain’s Got Talent,” performs a style he calls “classical soul.”

“We’re taking music that is unique to Black people and stylings that are unique to the African American historical musical experience, and we combine those elements into classical music,” he said.

Classical soul, Hendricks said, is an extension of the classical crossover genre, popularized by singers like Andrea Bocelli, which pairs contemporary musical styles and techniques with orchestration and vocal styles associated with opera and other older European musical forms.

‘Opera And Soul Together’

Putting together Vox Fortura in 2016 was simple, Hendricks said, as the list of required skills and the tight-knit nature of the Black musical theatre scene limited the selection drastically.

“The amount of people that can sing opera and soul together is a pretty small community worldwide, so we pretty much know who we are. If I haven’t seen you in an audition, then we probably did a show together,” Hendricks said.

Because of Birmingham’s cultural significance as a cradle of Civil Rights, Hendricks said he couldn’t think of “a better place in the entire world to debut this new classical soul show.

“Everywhere I go, everywhere I’ve lived, I tell them I’m from Birmingham, Alabama. The very first thing that they think about is Civil Rights and the struggle that Birmingham kind of spearheaded for Black rights in this country,” he said.

Vox Fortura, made up of Hendricks, Thomas Goodridge, Bruce Bean and Birmingham-based American Idol finalist Dominique Posey, is led by music director Dave Crenshaw, a Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist and songwriter also from Birmingham.

Some of the members of Vox Fortura originate from the United Kingdom, and Hendricks said Birmingham’s Civil Rights history may affect the way they perform the music in the show.

“When [Goodridge] comes here [Birmingham] and goes to the Civil Rights Institute and walks through Kelly Ingram Park and learns about the history of Black people in the city, it informs even how he can sing the song,” Hendricks said.

Kelly Ingram Park in downtown Birmingham was one of the primary locations used during demonstrations for Civil Rights in the 1960s.

“African Lament”

The show will also serve as the world premiere of a piece from Birmingham composer Sam Robinson, titled “African Lament.” Robinson, a cousin of Hendricks who previously served as a music minister for New Pilgrim Baptist Church and the Carlton Reese Memorial Choir, gave the piece of music to Hendricks in 2018 but died in 2020.

Hendricks said the song, originally for piano and voice, has been reworked for Vox Fortura and will be premiered with an accompanying dance, choregraphed by Alabama School of Fine Arts instructor Germaul Barnes.

“[Robinson] passed away, unfortunately, before we had a chance to do it together, and some of the things that we spoke about were taking this music and building upon it, so I took it upon myself to do that, in honor of him, and kind of finished the work on his behalf. This is the first time anyone’s ever heard this song,” Hendricks said.

Re-arranging songs to fit Vox Fortura, Hendricks said, often involves switching pop vocals for an operatic style or swapping drum kits for more traditional percussion. However, with each song, the approach can vary.

For the show at the Lyric, the group will perform with a 13-piece orchestra and the Miles College “Golden Voices” Choir.

The night will also feature Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley Jones, Opera Birmingham, soprano Allison Sanders and soul singer Deidre Gaddis.

Joining The School Choir

Hendricks, a Mountain Brook native, is a graduate of the Altamont School, where he said he first became aware of his vocal talent. A soccer athlete at the school, Hendricks said he initially joined the school’s choir in seventh grade for fun.

“I decided I want to join the choir because it the cute girls were in there, and…a third of our upper school was in choir, so it was a really, really popular thing to do,” Hendricks said.

At that time, Dewin Tibbs served as Altamont’s choral director. Tibbs introduced Hendricks to opera and choral music, Hendricks said. He still learns under Tibbs to this day, he said.

After graduating from Altamont, Hendricks participated in a summer program at the Tanglewood Music Center at Boston University, before going to Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, TX, where he studied opera.

After graduating from SMU in 2009, Hendricks went on to the Juilliard School in New York City, where he started putting together his concept of combining music from the African American tradition with the older European music he had come to love, he said.

After finishing up Juilliard in 2012, Hendricks left for the Disneyland in Hong Kong, China, where he played Simba in the musical version of “The Lion King” until 2014.

Following a six-month stint where Hendricks performed his own show on a world cruise, Hendricks decided to move to London, United Kingdom in 2015, where he auditioned for “Motown: The Musical.” Hendricks secured his spot to play Dennis Edwards, a Birmingham native in the show, in in 2016.

“Something Special”

That same year, Hendricks put together the first incarnation of Vox Fortura, originally called Vox Fortis, with a lineup that included Goodridge, and auditioned for “Britain’s Got Talent” with their first classical soul arrangement, a version of Stevie Wonder’s “Lately.”

“I knew from the very first time that we sang that, that this was going to be something special…We went to the first audition, the one where you stand in line, and you’ve got to wait with all the crazies and hopefuls. We did our first audition, and then we didn’t wait in line ever again,” Hendricks said.

Vox is the Latin word for voice, and “Fortura” is a combination of “fortis,” the Latin word for strong, as well as the words fortune and future.

“Strong voices of the future is kind of what we call it,” Hendricks said.

That first edition of Vox Fortura made it all the way up to the competition’s semi-finals — amid a lineup including “a really cute dog,” a huge gospel choir and a “really, really annoying guy dressed in a Superman costume that played the accordion” — but lost.

However, that loss may have been best for the group, Hendricks said. Losing meant that the group was able to more quickly to get out of the television contract than if they stayed for the full length of the competition.

“If we made the finals, we would have had two years…After the smoke cleared, it was really a blessing in disguise, because we went on tour with another…group called G4 within 90 days of leaving the competition,” Hendricks said.

Vox Fortura has performed at famous London venues Twickenham Stadium and the Royal Albert Hall and across the UK. Now they’ll be at Birmingham’s Lyric Theatre on Nov. 6.

Vox Fortura in Concert: An Evening of Classical Soul on Sunday, November 6 at 5 p.m. in The Lyric Theatre, 1800 3rd Ave N, Birmingham, AL 35203

It’s been a little over two weeks since the BBC bafflingly decided, rather than to channel the Last Night of the Proms (the UK’s most shamelessly jingoistic occasion) into an evening both celebrating the life and commemorating the death of the Queen, that they would instead simply pull the plug. Whether or not James B. Wilson’s planned Last Night opener 1922 would have been a change from the usual mess of superficial sonic sputum we’ll now never know, unless it gets reheated and revamped as 1923 for next year’s festival. Regardless, it’s time to turn our attention to the works that did get performed, and take a brief look at the results of this year’s 5:4 Proms première polls.

First of all, though, i should say that this is the last year i’ll be running these polls. That’s not because i don’t find them interesting – quite the opposite – but mainly because i’m not convinced that you find them terribly important or relevant any longer. i want to thank all those of you who took time to vote in this year’s polls, i’m grateful for your involvement. But the turnout this year, 538 votes overall (curiously identical to last year’s total), is an extremely tiny proportion – less than 5% – of the number of people who actually read each of the Proms articles on 5:4. That clearly indicates that while interest in reading about the works is strong, that interest doesn’t extend to expressing your own views in response. That’s absolutely fine, of course, but i’ve therefore decided that, after a decade of these polls, this will be the last year they’ll be taking place. So for the last time, then, i’ve crunched the numbers and here’s how you voted.

Worst New Work: Missy Mazzoli – Violin Concerto (Procession)

Runner-up: Betsy Jolas – bTunes

It’s two for two for the USA this year. Personally i didn’t find these works as problematic as some of the others, but i get where you’re coming from all the same. It’s interesting to note that this is the second year in a row that a US piece has been voted the worst; make of that what you will. The issues rife in both of these pieces make it understandable that you voted the way you did. Why Mazzoli made her violin so obsessed with arpeggios is beyond me; having relistened to the piece since, the soloist just sounds rather stupid a lot of the time. Having written recently about Jolas’ bTunes there’s no need to rehash my thoughts here, but it’s certainly the most misconceived work to have been premièred at the 2022 Proms. All very disappointing.

Best New Work: Anna Thorvaldsdottir – ARCHORA

Runner-up: Gavin Higgins – Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra

This wasn’t even remotely close: ARCHORA was far and away your favourite choice in the polls. We haven’t always agreed with each other, dear readers, but this year we’re definitely on the same wavelength – though personally, i think i would have given the edge to Higgins’ Concerto Grosso, simply because (despite its inappropriate name – i can’t help it, that still irks) it’s such an outstanding and ambitious achievement, plus it contained some of the most stunningly beautiful new music i’ve heard in years. But ARCHORA‘s definitely a worthy winner, proof that while Thorvaldsdottir’s sound palette continues to be largely derived from ploughing pretty much the same furrow, she’s nonetheless (usually) able to come up with powerfully effective and immersive soundscapes.

The work that caused the most division was Thomas Adès’ Märchentänze, proof positive that despite its overwhelmingly obvious idiocies, the Faberian faithful are still determined to big up their favourite idol. No surprise there. The work that garnered (if that’s the right word) the most indifference was Robert Ames’ arrangements of Selections from Battlefield 2042 by Hildur Guðnadóttir & Sam Slater. i’m tempted to say no surprise there either: this was also the work that got by far the fewest votes, perhaps indicating a lack of interest due to the music originating in a videogame?

Beyond these, it’s impossible not to notice the considerable added poignancy that Cheryl-Frances Hoad’s Your Servant, Elizabeth now has in the wake of recent events. It must be one of the very last works composed in tribute to the Queen while she was still alive, and, having spent a bit more time with it recently, it’s really not a bad send-off; that immense climax gets me every time. And one final observation: the gender balance was again better this year: women composed 57% of these premières, which amounted to just over 48% of actual musical duration. i’m sure those statistics, if extended to the total music performed at the Proms, would tell a woefully different story, but from the perspective of contemporary music at least, things seem to be going in a positive direction.

It’s reasonable to expect extreme variety and diversity at Ultima, though many of the more conventional concert events i experienced at this year’s festival were a surprisingly mixed bag, qualitatively speaking. The most taxing was unfortunately a concert celebrating the award of this year’s Arne Nordheim prize to Jan Martin Smørdal. In all honesty, i came away with little idea as to why Smørdal was worthy to receive this prize. Pretty much everything featured in this concert felt like seriously reheated ideas one’s encountered far too many times before, for the most part hoping (vainly) that actions might speak not only louder than words, but also than music. In lieu of meaning, Smørdal seemed primarily concerned with entertaining the audience, and in this respect, judging by the array of chuckles that permeated this concert, he appeared to have succeeded. Personally, it seemed less like a prize-winning portrait than a student’s major project, filled with stuff that was depressingly tame, timid and trivial.

The one piece in the concert that wasn’t an aching cringe-fest of hackneyed tropes and vapid contortions was the opener, Répétitions II for flute and electronics, composed in 2021. Superbly performed by Alessandra Rombolà, the work comprised patterns of rapid lip pizzicati captured in an ever-extending sequence of loops. It was captivating to hear past phrases being continually repurposed and reshaped by present ideas, particularly when Rombolà seamlessly switched between flute and piccolo, and at the close of the work when everything was reduced to soft whistles. It was the one piece in the whole evening where an inherent sense of fun was perfectly aligned with a cogent musical argument. Perhaps Arne Nordheim might have approved… but who can say?

Another curate’s egg concert came courtesy of Cikada on Sunday afternoon. The focus of the event was on Qasim Naqvi, though the three works of his that we heard (two new transformations of the Agnus Dei plainchant for electronics and strings plus a string-only arrangement of an older work) were utterly boring. The fact that chant formed the basis for his pair of Agnus Dei Transmutations was entirely moot, since at such glacial non-speeds as these it could have been based on absolutely anything, reduced as it was to little more than just a blank mush. Perhaps Naqvi believes there’s profundity to be found in this kind of formless noodling, but it was impossible to hear it as anything other than just ponderous and empty. Infinitely more engaging was, again, the concert opener, Salvatore Sciarrino‘s 1987 Piano Trio No. 2. Violinist Karin Hellqvist and cellist Torun Stavseng brilliantly emphasised the precariousness of the music, first delicately balancing on harmonics, later dancing on them. Kenneth Karlson interpreted his role at the piano as that of provocateur, firing gestures at the others, seemingly in the hope of knocking them both over. Only half-heartedly, though, as the conclusion could hardly have been made more united and playful.

One of the most striking – in every sense of the word – performances at Ultima 2022 was also, on the face of it, one of the simplest. The festival began with a rendition of 180 Hammer Blows Against the War Monkeys by Danish Fluxus artist Henning Christensen. It was originally performed by Christensen in 1988 in Berlin as an anti-war demonstration; whether or not the fall of the Berlin Wall the following year was in any precipitated by this action is debatable. Either way, with both that potential power and the ongoing war being raged by Russia against Ukraine in mind, the work was presented again, this time by Christensen’s son, Thorbjørn, in front of Oslo’s austere town hall.

There was something almost biblical about such stark, simple action, regularly thwacking a slab of metal with a large sledgehammer. Christensen became like a latter-day Joshua at the battle of Jericho, performing an ostensibly futile, even ridiculous ritual that, unbeknownst to anyone else, tapped into some deep, elemental power. With each hammer blow, preceded by a number count and followed by a burst of electronic noise, there was an implied accumulative effect, the impacts joining together to form something altogether more massive and unwieldy. Witnessing Christensen pound relentlessly away was like a small-scale analogue of the tenacity the world needs in never ceasing to stand up to, and pound down upon, all dictators and tyrants. It took a year for the 1988 performance to have its effect; one can only hope this one will achieve its end very much quicker.

It was fitting that the evening began with such a blunt, ritualistic statement as this. It was immediately followed, inside the Town Hall, by a rare performance of Iannis Xenakis‘ 1960s music theatre work Oresteia. By turns primordial, primitive and primal, conveying not so much a narrative as a blunt force sequence of trauma and triumph, i’m not sure i’ve ever experienced a work that so completely managed to sound equally as if it could date from antiquity or have been composed last week. Accompanied by a dazzling light display across the inner walls of the Town Hall, it provoked a profound sense of culture shock, being confronted by music that sidestepped traditions of storytelling and word painting and tapped straight into heartfelt emotional communication. It felt as raw as music could possibly get.

While the chorus (Det Norske Solistkor) and ensemble (Oslo Sinfonietta) accomplished the world building and a representation of the populace, the extent of that rawness only became fully apparent through the work’s twin mouthpieces, Kassandra and Athena. Nicholas Isherwood’s portrayal of Athena was sober yet unlimited, transcending boundaries and conventions of gender, register and behaviour to the end of articulating awesome truths encrusted with scarlet and gold. Yet this was as nothing beside Seth Carico’s astounding Kassandra. In an aria to end all arias, Carico unleashed a stream of emotional consciousness as if not only Kassandra’s life but his own also depended on it. Heartfelt, desperate, histrionic, tender, imploring, angry, forlorn, spasmodic, lyrical, masculine, feminine – Carico moved through all these and other states with complete fluidity. Though lengthy, his solo proved endlessly arresting, catching us all in an unstoppable torrent / tirade of shrieks and bellows, utterings and entreaties, provoking similar extremes in the instruments, sending them to their registral limits – all piccolos, contrabassoons and tubas – with the percussion punctuating everything with portentous thunderclaps.

Having hitherto largely avoided even the slightest hint of an even vaguely recognisable notion of sentiment, Xenakis brings Oresteia to an optimistic conclusion, ending in joy and peace. That ending triggered what was, in this context, perhaps the most mind-boggling moment of all: a complete breakdown of the work’s dark severity, as all the players let fly raucous improvisations while the singers – now including a children’s choir – ran amok round the space, wildly celebrating and dancing in the aisles. Here was optimism and catharsis at their most shatteringly authentic.

i’m concluding my coverage of this year’s Ultima festival with something that – over a week since it took place – i’m still grappling with in terms of what i experienced as well as, quite simply, what to call it. On 17 September a marathon was being run through the streets of Oslo, while in the city’s Paulus Kirke a rather different marathon was taking place. Depending on your perspective and / or tenacity, Nils Henrik Asheim‘s Organotopia was either a single concert featuring one 12-hour work, or a series of connected concerts comprising a collection of interrelated pieces. Maybe it’s useful to quote from Asheim’s score, where in the introduction he describes it as “a library of ideas and influences. At the same time, a laboratory of creation”, going on to elaborate that it’s “written as a fixed structure with a lot of open fields for improvisation”. The piece was centred upon not just one but a whole host of mechanical and electronic keyboard instruments, including the Paulus Kirke’s pipe organ, various electric organs and synthesizers, a harmonium, a chamber organ, an accordion, a piano, and Jean-Baptiste Monnot’s remarkable custom-built modular ‘Orgue du voyage‘. Considering the illustrious tradition of large-scale organ works from the 20th century onwards, it’s perhaps most appropriate to think of Organotopia as a cycle.

However it’s defined, what Organotopia consisted of was essentially a sequence of one-hour sections, each having a different theme exploring and reimagining music from the past. During this time, the group of organists – Asheim, Susanne Kujala, Hampus Lindwall, Jean-Baptiste Monnot, Guoste Tamulynaite, Jonas Cambien, Vojtěch Procházka, and Daniel Buner Formo, all moving between the different instruments – responded to Asheim’s highly descriptive, occasionally prescriptive, instructions. As the music played out inside the church, it was also extended into the adjacent Birkelunden Park via speaker installations, projections and additional performances. For the last 20 minutes of each hour, a vocalist, as stated in the score, “infiltrates the music with his / her voice, bringing in material related to her own tradition and personal story”. i’d like to be able to say that i experienced all 12 hours of this behemoth but, alas, for not particularly good (though practical) reasons i only managed to catch 8½ hours. The regret i still feel about that is not merely due to the lack of a sense of completeness, but simply due to the fact that the majority of what i heard completely blew me away. To do real justice to a work such as this would take a lot more than just one article, but i’ll do my best to scratch the surface of Organotopia.

An especially nice touch was the way the work grew out of informality and familiarity. For the first 20 minutes or so, the audience was free to mingle around the church, getting acquainted with both the organs (the ones on the ground floor at least; there were more up in the balconies and organ loft), and the organists, who explained and gave quick demonstrations of their instruments. This segued into the start of Organotopia proper, with what sounded like a growing harmonic series; it quickly expanded beyond those confines but just about managed to maintain a grip on harmonic solidity. Networks of high tones appeared like a chorus of synthetic birds; somehow, from out of their shrill notes jostling against each other, counterpoint emerged alongside a palpable sense of order, or a system, or a cosmos, beneath and beyond everything. In many respects this was a paradigm of Organotopia as a whole, combining deep layers of organisation with free-wheeling capricious elements that at times almost, but never quite, lost sight of home. Whistles from somewhere turned out to be a group of figures (dancers from KHiO, Oslo’s National Academy of the Arts) who slowly descended from the organ loft and processed up the nave, whereupon they formed complex interlocking shapes and emotionally-charged gestures while the organs swirled around them, now highly florid. A singer, Sofia Jernberg, appeared and unleashed a high melisma that became echoed by the organs. Her smooth line fragmented, becoming avant-vocalise – a mesmerising collection of tics, chirrups and deep ‘pedal’ notes – before evolving into a climactic ululation causing the organs to become energised. Seemingly impossibly slowly, everything subsided until all that remained was a single deep tone, ending as it had begun.

i feel i should conclude that paragraph with something like, “and there was evening, and there was morning: the first day”, simply because each of these one-hour sections felt like such a remarkably immense and substantial act of creation. During this and each of the successive sections, Asheim’s conception created not merely a soundscape but a fully immersive sound world that, for its duration, defined both the nature and the limits of music within that world. As such, the vocalists became literal mouthpieces, ambassadors perhaps, communicating with us in a variety of alien tongues (reinforced by never using obviously tangible words) though all too human emotional impulses.

The second hour (‘Eye of the Chorale’) focused on hymn tunes, weaving a texture from minimalised arpeggios following various chord progressions. Especially striking from this was a lovely ‘droplet’ effect, as if each individual note of a melody were being exquisitely embellished. Later it became blurry, evoking a wistful, nostalgic effect as the music took on the form of a half-remembered memory. Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer’s subsequent vocalise eventually took on the qualities of a vaporous, breathy hymn – sounding like a partially-evaporated Ute Lemper – before slowly walking out encouraging the audience to sing with her one note at a time. 3pm’s ‘Electric Organ Picnic’ conjured up a squelchy, proggy analogue synth yesterworld of retrofuturism, responding to injected samples from the likes of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Led Zeppelin, Manfred Mann and The Doors. By contrast, the following hour (‘Grieg in a Landscape’) created a mellifluous environment, like a painting where all the colours were engaged in semi-imperceptible movement. The contrasts here, where little fluffy flute phrases became caught up in juddering waves of dense, wind-like chord formations, were overwhelmingly powerful.

For me, Organotopia‘s most incredible sequence occurred at 5pm. Titled ‘Passacaglia Wanderings’, the music explored the bassline from J. S. Bach’s C minor Passacaglia. Occupying an altogether more contemplative world, the music sounded simultaneously through-composed and improvised, becoming all the more hypnotic and enveloping as it never paused to draw breath. The organ timbres were occasionally coloured by electronic shimmers, and over time it became impossible to remember where we had come from, how we had got here, lost in a massive musical canvas. Whereupon vocalist Simin Tander unexpectedly joined in, crying and wailing from a balcony, her sounds suggestive of both ecstasy and lamentation, before slowly transforming into another wordless song (again, the sentiments being expressed seemed to go beyond what words were capable of) before breaking down into vocal acrobatics in a duet with the Orgue du voyage. As the hour came to a close, it became apparent that, somehow, Bach’s passacaglia bassline was still there at the core of the music, now underpinning Tander’s final, folk-like song.

The work’s last few hours, if anything, ramped up the creative ambition. The tenth hour was devoted to ‘Escape of the Fugue’, 40 minutes of wrangling with a graphic score derived from assorted fugue subjects, leading to a musical language combining strange, tilting smears of sound and intricate filigree. This featured an amazing sequence where, as if by magic, from music with seemingly no connective tissue a tangible fugue theme spontaneously appeared, shared around the organists who indulged in a lengthy burst of fugato. In one of the most stunning denouements of the evening, vocalist Øystein Elle, after initially seemed to be jumping between the different organs, trying to find a melodic path through their angular shapes, turned inward in a stream of intimate glossolalia, whereupon he rediscovered clarity and coherence, re-emerging in a passionate Renaissance-esque song, before losing the plot and wandering off, muttering to himself.

An hour of Wagner-inspired shenanigans – appropriately including some of the most enormous full force swells of the whole day – led to the final hour’s ‘Summing Up’. The dancers returned for a reprise of their actions, obsessively singing a four-note phrase, before the music transcended everything that had gone before and focused on just a single note. Drone was everywhere, festooned with adjacent pedal notes, shifting harmonics, electronic stings and all possible kinds of embellishment. Four of the singers returned to join in, forming the most marvellously bizarre quartet of vocal curiosities, before fusing into a gorgeous, united melisma. Organotopia finished with a coda where individual organ pipes were removed from the Orgue du voyage and blown through by the performers, bringing the day to an end with a beautiful blur of random whistles, in which traces of melody uncannily seemed to emerge.

Over the last few years, i’ve come more and more to the conclusion that Nils Henrik Asheim is one of the most brilliantly creative musical minds i’ve ever encountered. The experience of Organotopia, to put it mildly, decisively confirms that conclusion. Such an enormous undertaking as this would no doubt be difficult to repeat, so hopefully the work has been recorded in some way in order to allow others to experience its colossal wealth of wonders (and me to catch those few hours i missed). This wasn’t just my highlight of Ultima 2022, it was my highlight of pretty much every musical festival i’ve ever attended.

There’s a lot more information about the work on the Organotopia website and Instagram, and below there’s a couple of all-too-brief clips i recorded that give just the slightest of hints of what went on.