(un)Romantic - Improvising interpretation
The duo Roggen/Nyhus - with Ingfrid Breie Nyhus on piano and me on vocals - first started playing in 2016, exploring interpretation as such. By 2020 the search had developed into improvisation and re-composition.
The artistic research project (un)Romantic - Improvising interpretation took place through 2021-2024, supported by the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme.
As a starting point we had learnt late romantic songs by heart, together, and then began experimenting through a set of methods that we developed along the way. In short: to repeatedly internalize, unlearn and revive the material, in all the different stages of transformation. Over and over. Then perform, record, and retell the musical stories, through improvising with the reconnected remains that we carry in our bodies.
Our respective backgrounds from jazz, improvised music and songwriting (Live Maria) Vs classical, contemporary music and folk music (Ingfrid) always play along in our musical interaction.
The research project also included conversations with, playing with and other sorts of exchange with a number of brilliant artists - most of whom are represented with contributions in the project's collected dissemination on Research Catalogue together with our individual and joint texts, reflections and video documentation.
With this fun little player from our video article "Srrjei" in VIS Journal of Artistic Research Oct 2024, you can "play us" like an organ and improvise with some bits and remains of Arioso by Jean Sibelius.
The article itself is in Norwegian. It deals with questions about what happens with a material, a "story", when it interconnects with new people, bodies, circumstances.
The (un)Romantic project also resulted in the two albums Skymt and Symfoni - released as vinyls in a combined cover, including a beautifully printed book - in Scandinavian - to leaf through while listening to the music.