MAJA S.K. RATKJE - River Mouth Echoes

Second solo work for Norwegian composer Maja S.K. Ratkje, who is already active in expressively disparate groups such as SPUNK, Fe-Mail and Trinacria. "River Mouth Echoes" gathers and distills a decade of her work (spanning from '97 to the present), drawing on electronic research and acoustic writing for ensemble, in an incisive melange of avant-garde conceptions that still feel, in these recent times, largely beyond dispute.

A feverish, tireless improvisation, sustained by fervid, boundless creative impulses lent to avant-garde and free-jazz ideas capable of unleashing untamed energy from every fiber, in a continuous shape-shifting of musical guises. Impulses that move through orchestral textures (with contributions from the Oslo Sinfonietta, the trio Poing and Fretwork), through chamber writing (four violas), through saxophones or electronics (synth, processing, noises), or through Maja's surreal vocalizations, typically strangled or slurred, which her devotees have come to expect.

A disquieting, seductive game of possible permutations between different musical traditions, which, starting from ceremonial practice, turns into a modern reworking of classical forms - capricious yet resolute. From symmetrical foundations we move to exasperated, distorted collisions between multiple instrumental timbres, in which our "heroine" plays now an Erinys, now a Eumenid.

An open, consubstantial game built from diverse legacies and inflections, able to place multiple forms and spatial dimensions into tension. The music is generated through syncopations and dips, through tensions and confrontations over which the charioteer Ratkje claims full authority and freedom of choice.

An exhaustive artistic synthesis that goes beyond and outside of time, this is the Norwegian composer's achievement: the music announces itself trembling, lush and self-sufficient, and proceeds to saturate the boundaries of its perimeter in flows of blazing instrumental choral writing in agon, channeling emotional and propulsive streams into crescendo. Or it breathes out, letting buds of sound surface from monochrome backdrops, 'solo' trails of soul (viola, Alto or Tenor sax); sharp wandering comets wrapped in electro-noise mantles that flow or drip down, into the bell of the instrument, bare and enveloping. For catharsis.

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16/06/2008