Festival Artists
PHOTO: Lars Bryngelsson
Engegård Quartet
Arvid Engegård—violin
Laura Custodio Sabas—violin
Juliet Jopling—viola
Jan Clemens Carlsen—cello
The Engegård Quartet was formed under the midnight sun in Lofoten in 2006 and quickly became one of Norway's most sought-after ensembles. The quartet has a busy concert schedule and performs in some of Europe's finest arenas, including Salzburg's Mozarteum and Prague's Rudolfinum, and most recently on tour in South America. Festival appearances include Delft Chamber Music Festival, SoNoRo Festival and Heidelberg's Streichquartettfest, and they are delighted to have experienced interactions with, among others, Sir András Schiff, Leif Ove Andsnes and Christian Ihle Hadland. The members are deeply involved in promoting chamber music in Norway - Arvid Engegård as founder of the Lofoten International Chamber Music Festival, and Juliet Jopling as artistic director of the Oslo Quartet Series. The Engegård Quartet is supported by the Norwegian Culture Council.
PHOTO: Arcadia Quartet
Arcadia Quartet
Răsvan Dumitru—Violin
Ana Török—Violin
Traian Boală—VIOLA
Zsolt Török—cello
Winners of the 2014 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, the 2012 Wigmore Hall London International String Quartet Competition, the 2011 Almere International Chamber Music Competition and the 2009 International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg, the Arcadia Quartet is quickly establishing itself as one of the most exciting string quartets of its generation. The Arcadia Quartet began collaborating with Chandos Records in September 2017, releasing an album containing the complete Bartók string quartets. This double CD comes with rave reviews from the most recognized professional publications in the world and with 5-star reviews in Diapason and Classica magazines. The album was named Disc of the Week by BBC Radio 3, one of the best albums of October 2018 by WQXR-FM in New York, and Disc of the Month by Classica magazine in January 2019. Arcadia Quartet has organized its first chamber music workshop in the summer of 2021 .This series of master classes aims to encourage, guide and advance young musicians in their professional development, through the art of chamber music.
PHOTO: Béla Kása
Muzsikás
Mihály Sipos—Violin, citera
László Porteleki—Violin, koboz, vocal
LASZLO MESTER—kontra, viola
Dániel Hamar— DOUBLE BASS, gardon, DRUMS, cymbal
Muzsikás is a name given to musicians who play traditional folk music in Hungarian villages. Their performance is an exciting musical experience where the audience is transported back to the remote Hungarian village atmosphere where traditions survived through the centuries. Members of the group play and improvise in the style of the old traditional Hungarian folk bands where the solo violin and singing were typically accompanied by the three-stringed viola and double bass. The music of Muzsikás can be characterized as the traditional arrangements of authentic Hungarian folk music with a style typical of the best village musicians. It has nothing in common stylistically with the Gypsy-Hungarian style, but is rather the true folk music of Hungary, whose most beautiful melodies were considered by Béla Bartók to be equal to the greatest works of music.
Nils Anders Mortensen
Nils Anders Mortensen was born in Flekkefjord and has been playing the piano since he was three years old. After studying in Oslo, Paris and Hannover, he went to Alta in 1998 to become a regional musician, which according to Nils himself must be one of the more varied and rewarding musician's lives that exist. As a musician in Northern Norway, Nils has worked in classical and contemporary music, ethno, shows and jazz, with amateurs and professionals, on piano and organ, and as an arranger and composer.
Mortensen has previously recorded two solo piano albums with music by Grieg, Bartok, Debussy and Brahms. About the album "Im Freien" Dagbladet wrote: "Music that breathes [...] a remarkably fine product." Morgenbladet wrote: "Nils Anders Mortensen is playing, and you should listen. A personal voice rings through the accuracy.” Through his collaboration with the singer Marianne Beate Kielland, Mortensen has also recorded lieder by Schumann, Mozart, Grieg, Elling, Thommessen, Webern, Berg, Schönberg, Iberg, Lund and Hellstenius. Audiophile Audition writes about the Grieg recording: "This is one of the finest lieder records I have ever heard, and surely one of the top ten discs of any type that I will encounter in 2014. Grab it." The recording "Veslemøy synsk" with Thommessen's music was nominated for a Grammy.
Yukari Ohno
Yukari Ohno was born in Japan in 1995. She started playing the violin at the age of 2. She has won prizes at international competitions including Valsesia Musica International Competition in Italy, International Violin Competition Vasco Abadijev in Bulgaria, International Queen Sophie Sharlotte Violin Competition in Germany, International Competition for Young Violinist in honor of Karol Lipinski and Henryk Wieniawski in Poland.
Ohno recently won first prize at the Princess Astrid International Music Competition 2021 in Norway — and also took a solo engagement with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, a concert in Bergen in collaboration with the international Edvard Grieg competition, and career counseling with Andrew Ousley (Unison Media).
Yukari Ohno has given several concerts as soloist with orchestra at international music festivals.
Björn Nyman
Björn Nyman is one of the Nordic countries' leading clarinetists of his generation, as well as a sought-after chamber musician and soloist. He is a solo clarinetist in the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Nyman is a prizewinner in two of the most prestigious international competitions for clarinetists: the ARD competition in Munich 2003 and the Carl Nielsen competition in Odense 2005. In both competitions he was also awarded the prize for best interpretation of Mozart's clarinet concerto. Nyman shared first prize in the 2002 Crusell competition and won the ConocoPhillips prize the same year. He has been a soloist with, among others Broadcasting Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Bayerische Rundfunk, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra and Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. He is an active chamber musician and has played at many of the leading festivals in the Nordics.
foto: Vahur Löhmus
Schola Cantorum
Schola Cantorum is a chamber choir affiliated with the University of Oslo, and the members are mostly music students. The choir was founded in 1964 by Knut Nystedt, and maintains a high national and international level. They have won many prestigious competitions, most recently the Norwegian champion title in 2021 and two first prizes in the International competition in Tallinn in 2023. The choir is known for its ability to communicate and for its beautiful sound, has toured large parts of the world and released several CDs is. They focus on a cappella choral music, but have also had regular collaborations with orchestras and musicians, such as KORK, the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, the Norwegian Armed Forces' Staff Music and Dimmu Borgir. In recent years, Schola Cantorum has received operating funds from the Cultural Council for choirs at a very high level.
Tone Bianca Sparre Dahl is a trained singing and piano pedagogue from the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Conservatory of Music in Stavanger and the Kodaly Institute in Hungary, and completed her diploma in conducting at the Academy of Music in 1991. From 2014, she has the Government's scholarship for established artists and is an associate professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in choral conducting. She is also the artistic director of the Chamber Choir YMIR, and has been the conductor of the Schola Cantorum since 2002. Tone Bianca Sparre Dahl is widely used as a seminar presenter for choirs and conductors all over the world, especially in subjects such as leadership and communication, conducting and singing technique for choirs.
Tore Linné Eriksen
Tore Linné Eriksen is a Norwegian historian, development researcher and non-fiction author. He has been particularly concerned with African history, global and environmental history, North/South relations and the political economy of the Third World. countries' position in the world economy.
Tore Linné Eriksen has written, edited or contributed to around 80 publications, many of which are textbooks for upper secondary school and higher education (see bibliography). For these publications he has received a number of awards, including The Conover-Porter Award, African Studies Association (USA) for The Political Economy of Namibia (1986), and the Brage prize for the textbooks Norway and the world from 1850 to 1940 and Norway and the world after 1940 (1993). For the book about Nelson Mandela (2002), he also received the Culture Council's award for best non-fiction book for children and young people. In 2008 he was awarded the Norwegian University of Applied Sciences' communication prize, and in 2010 he was awarded the Historical Journal Prize by the Norwegian Historical Association for the article "Genocide in a comparative colonial perspective: an outline of a professional debate".
PHoto: DMS
Den mangfaldige scenen
The diverse stage (DMS) is a children's and youth theater where annually 150 young people between the ages of 6 and 28 get to express themselves, learn and create theatre. The theater takes as its starting point the large and varied cultural wealth that young people bring with them, and gives each individual the opportunity to use and develop their creative abilities in collaboration with professional artists. We come up with new expressions in the meeting between the young people's interests and cultural heritage. The students practice every week and have a seminar. All the work results in smaller screenings or larger productions. Together with Det Norske Teatret, DMS won the Norwegian public's audience award for 2016 and is rated by the Danish Culture Fund as a source of inspiration for Danish children's theatre. DMS reaps great success with the preview Pavlov's Bitch (Joof/Johnsen), which in 2016/2017 will be played for 40,000 young people in Norway and the Nordics.
PHoto: Kristin Bolgård
