The Feminist Guide to the Sinfonietta
Instrumentation
Sinfonietta, narrator and footnotes
Commissioned
by Ensemble Ernst with support from Arts Council Norway
Durata
ca. 20 min
About
FROM AN INTERVIEW IN CONNECTION TO A PERFORMANCE WITH BIT20 in fall 2021
“The Feminist Guide to the Sinfonietta” is a piece of music, but also a kind of chitchat radio play with added sound. It’s silly and sarcastic and awkward and dull and at times way over the top.
But it also has a more profound sound dimension, and this is how I often work: I take something I have strong feelings or opinions about, and then I stretch it out, give it a backdrop, blow it up or shrink it such that the proportions don’t work anymore. And hopefully this leads to the audience leaving the concert hall with different thoughts than when they went in.
What is it like to perform this piece? Have you gotten any reactions?
Ja! Both positive and negative. Even if most of the negative reactions haven’t been expressed to me directly, there have been those, too. But honestly I didn’t expect any different. In fact, it’s been more surprising for me to hear people appreciate the piece also for itself, not only for the text. I’ve performed it four times in three very different settings and it’s been somewhat of a learning curve. It changes slightly every time in terms of audience, venue and who’s playing. Also in respect to myself. I feel that I as well have grown into the role of the narrator in this piece.
And do you notice any progress within your practice; has MeToo arrived in contemporary music and the composer’s profession?
I definitely notice a change, as opposed to a few years back, in what topics are acceptable to talk about. Nowadays it’s not only legitimate, but even encouraged to talk about recruiting women, about power imbalances, to document gender imbalances in different contexts and so forth. That leads to more spaces for these conversations about gender and composition and I welcome that. A colleague of mine put it this way: only a few years ago, this piece of yours (The Feminist Guide) could not have been composed. And I agree with that.
World premiere
by Ensemble Ernst and conductor Thomas Rimul, with the composer as soloist 17.9.2018 in Kulturkirken Jakob, Oslo.
The concert with Ensemble Ernst was given by the Ultima Festival to nyMusikk as a birthday present on the occasion of their 80th anniversary.
Other performances
09.05.2019
by Ensemble Ernst, the composer as soloist, conducted by Thomas Rimul, at the feminist festival “Talk Town” i København. The piece was programmed/invitet by the Danish Composers’ Society. The piece was performed twice.
13.11.2019
by Artic Philharmonic’s Sinfonietta, the composer as soloist, conducted by Tim Weiss at Nordic Music Days in Bodø.
28.08.2021
by BIT20, the composer as soloist, conducted by Christian Karlsen in Grieghallen, as a part of the concert series #NORDEN, Bergen
The Feminist Guide to the Sinfonietta in the press:
After the world premiere in 2018:
- In NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation):
- Mention in Spillerom’s main program 18.09.2018 (radio program)
- Review and conversation in Spillerom sunday 23.09.2018
- In Ballade (Norwegian platform for debates within and news from the music field) :
After the concert in Bodø 2019:
After the concert in Bergen 2021: