I limited my project to the interpretation of contemporary works by Norwegian and Nordic composers who represent different aesthetic perspectives, although all come from a tradition of Western composed and written classical music. The main composers in the project are: Lene Grenager, Jon Øivind Bylund Ness, Nils Henrik Asheim and Karin Rehnqvist. I cooperated with the composers during the composing process without asking them to adapt the music to my project, and I have been open for their comments on my interpretation of their work. The works by Lene Grenager have become a thread through the whole research project, starting before the project with her work Tryllesangen,
through the chamber works written for Alpaca Ensemble, the Solo Suite, to the concerto Khipukamayuk and finally
Ulvedrømmer, which we have created together. This close working relation over a period of fifteen years has been of great significance in my relationship to working with contemporary music.
I have performed concerts throughout the whole period of research, presenting the following works – all commissioned by me except Grenager’s Tryllesangen and Ratkje’s piece To F – in an ongoing process between 2013 and 2017. These works are part of the project documentation, some of them both in recordings and written form:
- Khipukamayuk, Solo concerto, commission by Lene Grenager, performed with Trondheim Sinfonietta, September 2014
- Cello Stories, Solo concerto by Nils Henrik Asheim, performed with Trondheim Soloists, November 2015
- Marmæle, Solo concerto, commission by Jon Øivind Bylund Ness, performed with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, May 2016
- In Orbit, Piano, clarinet, violin and cello quartet, commission by Karin Rehnqvist (2016)
- Tryllesangen, solo cello work by Lene Grenager (1998)
- Solo suite, solo cello work, commission by Lene Grenager (2012)
- To F, solo cello piece by Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (2011)
- Many Thousands Gone, for cello and voice, commission by Ellen Lindquist (2017)
- Concertino piccolo per violoncello et voce, commission by Eirik Hegdal (2016)
- Hospice Lazy, a commissioned performance work for Alpaca Ensemble by Alwynne Pritchard (2015)
- Ulvedrømmer, a commissioned performance work with cello and voice by Lene Grenager and M. B. Lie (2017)
As well as the main works in the original plan, the four first works on the list above, by Grenager, Ness, Asheim and Rehnqvist, I included other works which I found relevant to the project, and to have a broader catalogue of music on which to reflect.
The ephemeral dimension of the work means that audio and video recordings can never be more than a reduced representation of the musical moment, and this is important to take into account in relation to the documentation of the artistic project.