Meny

As part of this year’s Ultima Festival, we invite the audience into a concert where the boundaries of music are constantly challenged – between space and time, memory and the present, reality and imagination.

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The program opens with West Coast Sky Eternal by American composer and sound artist Ellen Reid, recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. In this work, Reid paints a sonic landscape that reflects the wide horizon, luminous light, and slow-moving rhythms of the American West Coast. Written for string orchestra, the piece is characterized by delicate textures, gradually shifting harmonies, and an atmosphere of spaciousness and timelessness. The music seems to float – as if breathing with the landscape itself – absorbing the sky, the ocean, and the sunlight of California.

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In Joanna Bailie’s Residue, the focus shifts to time itself. Pre-recorded sounds are stretched, echoed and eroded until they hover between tangible shapes and shimmering after-images, fusing with live strings to create a dream-like resonance—sonic ghosts that refuse to fade.

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The concert concludes with the duo Tlön – violinist Sara Övinge and cellist Gregor Riddell – in close collaboration with musicians from the NCO. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ twisting realms where the real and the imagined entwine, Tlön reshapes familiar musical fragments into evocative, striking new forms. Their performance invites us to listen with all our senses – embracing experiences that can’t be explained, but felt.

 

Artistic Director for the evening is Pekka Kuusisto. 

 

This program is curated by Pekka Kuusisto and Sara Övinge.

 

Note: The world premiere of Peder Barratt-Due’s work For Reasons Unknown has been postponed to a later date.

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