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NORBERG FESTIVAL 2015

HAPPENINGText: Victor Moreno

Although “Norberg Festival” started out in 1999, stays fresh and hungry in 2015 whilst receiving more international visitors. This is mostly because of its unique approach to music and also the opportunity that the festival provides to many experimental artists. There is no need to spend budget in big names for the shake of attracting audience but Norberg Festival has become an annual convention for both professional people and musicians related to experiential, DIY and electronic music. The combination of these artists with the type of venue and its surroundings makes the difference. The festival’s location is an old mine in the countryside, in the southern part of the Swedish region of Dalarna. Historically, Sweden has always been a top iron ore exporter country and this valley was the main production area for that since the middle of last century. This production moved to the very north of Sweden in the late 80’s, closing down the mine’s pithead here. Thus, Norberg Festival found in these empty buildings made of concrete the opportunity to launch this annual convention of experimental music. As a matter of fact, these buildings are part of the Swedish industrial heritage.

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the defunct mine site Mimerlaven, 2015

The festival’s partners include a range of well-known cultural institutions including Goethe Institute, Embassy of Spain, Music Board Berlin, EMS Elektronmusikstudion and Institut Français, among many others. Sound synthesis, spatialisation of sound textures along the concrete and the smell of dew after midnight make Norberg Festival’s hallmark. We had time to stroll around the mine to enjoy some of these live performances and speak with some of the artists about their experience at the festival in 2015.

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Mats Lindström (EMS/Fylkingen), Norberg Festival, 2015

The program is a combination of local and international artists. The main building, namely Mimer, hosted Mats Lindström’s performance. He is the head director of EMS, a Swedish institution dedicated to electroacoustic music, sound research and sound-art, making professional studios available for the production of music whose aim is to research and experiment with sound and composition. It wasn’t the first time Mr. Lindström was playing at Norberg Festival – as a composer, he has previously done performances and sound installations for different artistic organisations worldwide: Venice, New York, Moscow, Stockholm, Warsaw and many other places. For this year’s edition he had prepared for us his show “One”, which pays homage to American experiential music composer David Tudor, Mr. Lindström was so kind to explain to us his experience at the festival a bit after his performance: – “I’ve done this piece maybe in 20 different countries and tonight it was one of the most touching responses I’ve ever had, actually. Everybody around was here during my performance, so I really appreciated it. I had to use these long cables because the building is constructed in this way, which made to perform differently. There is always a variation on what I use. I never connect the stuff in the same way or use exactly the same kind of gear, so it sounds different from time to time but somehow it is always a surprise. I construct most of the stuff. Since the building is made of concrete it is a difficult acoustic environment, with a huge reverb; it is like a church. You have to listen and adapt to the building, I’ve done it in “worst” acoustically places like this, so I’m used to deal with it. I had to adapt my composition and it turned out pretty unique.”

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