Norway
The Image of Melancholy, Eike, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseMonday, 21 September 2015
“Sounds a bit depressing,” said several friends when I urged them to attend the theatrical incarnation of The Image of Melancholy, inspirational violinist Bjarte Eike’s award-winning CD with his stunning Norwegian-based group Barokksolistene.... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 14Monday, 17 August 2015
Don’t be fooled by the header picture. Despite the relaxed poses, Iceland’s Pink Street Boys are amongst the angriest, loudest, most unhinged bands on the planet right now. Hits #1, their debut vinyl album – which follows distorted-sounding, lower-... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: From heritage to art nowWednesday, 22 July 2015
Things you might know about Oslo: it’s expensive and the cost of a beer, wine, dinner for two – whatever your tourist yardstick – might make your hair stand on end (the cost of living is currently second only to Singapore city, according to a 2014... Read more... |
10 Questions for Pianist Leif Ove AndsnesMonday, 20 July 2015
Though perhaps not quite the "long strange trip" once hymned by the Grateful Dead, Leif Ove Andsnes's Beethoven Journey has been a marathon undertaking. It has spanned four years, during which the Norwegian pianist and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Førdefestivalen: Music and the midnight sunSunday, 12 July 2015
The first thing that strikes you at 3am is the light, that strange disembodied glow of Norway’s midsummer midnight sun casting its rays over a landscape soaked in fantasy proportions – sheer glacial drops of greenstone, sweet-water fjords... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bergen 2: Leif Ove Andsnes curatesMonday, 08 June 2015
If this were only the usual international festival – and it’s still a big “only” where Bergen’s flagship fortnight of theatre, dance, art and music is concerned – it might not be easy to justify swanning off to one of the most beautifully situated... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bergen 1: Jazz in a sardine factorySaturday, 06 June 2015
Reggie Watts has a few things to say about Norway. In Bergen to play Natjazz, the annual jazz festival, he’s concerned about the local predilection for fish soup. Be careful, he warns, it can be dangerously hot. Then there are trolls and the... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 13Thursday, 02 April 2015
Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated... Read more... |
BlindMonday, 23 March 2015
How would a sighted adult react to becoming blind? What would their anxieties be? How would they construct their new world? Could they construct one? All these questions are central to the Norwegian film Blind. Ingrid can no longer see and is... Read more... |
Jan Garbarek Group, Stormen, BodøMonday, 26 January 2015
Norway’s celebrated jazz colossus Jan Garbarek hadn’t played the north Norwegian city of Bodø for 15 years. Moreover, he and his group took the stage of the spanking new Stormen concert house as the openers of Bodø Jazz Open, the city’s four-day... Read more... |
Kon-TikiMonday, 15 December 2014
Nothing proves a theory better than practice, and this is exactly what Norwegian adventurer-archaeologist-ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl did in 1947 when he and five companions sailed a raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove his hypothesis of how the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Two Peer Gynts and a HamletMonday, 08 December 2014
Not so much a national hero, more a national disgrace. That seems to be the current consensus on Peer Gynt as Norway moves forward from having canonized the wild-card wanderer of Ibsen's early epic. It’s now 200 years since Norway gained a... Read more... |
