Research on Akos Rozmann

This week at EMS, we have the company of Gergely Loch, an enthusiastic musicology student of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest, Hungary. Gergely´s aim is to perform research on Akos Rozmann, one of the most prominent composers of electroacoustic music in Sweden. Akos Rozmann, originally from Hungary but residing in Sweden since the 1970s, sadly died two years ago. Up until his death, he was one of the composers who worked the most frequently here at EMS. For a long time he was an organist at the Catholic Church, where he also had his subterranean sound studio. He stopped writing instrumental music very early on as a composition student and left us a great number of electroacoustic works such as Impulsioni, Twelve stations, Images of dream and death to name but a few. His music is strongly emotional, and the richness of the compositional material has in most cases led to long gripping developments, leaving the listener both shaken and stirred. Mass, first performed in 2004 at the German Church in Stockholm, is several hours long and it took five days to perform it in its entirety. Apart from the music we know, Rozmann left a considerable amount of tapes, diaries etc. which we are delighted to know that Gergely Loch is going to study while preparing his PhD. This will be time well spent.

/Isabel

EMS at MySpace

EMS now has a MySpace page. You can also find a few videos from the festival Rålektronika 2003 on YouTube.

Update August, 25: We've now got a Flickr page too! More photos and vids will come in due time, but for now you can view some pics from the Rålektronika and Lövstabruk festivals.

Rålektronika is pronounced "Rawlectronica", which is a pun on "Raw electronic" and Rålambshov (pronounced "Raw-lambs-haw"), the park in Stockholm where the festival took place.

The EAM festival at Rålambshov is arranged by VEMS (a society for composers working at EMS), and has been an annual event since 2001, although this year it moved to Långholmen, at the opposite side of Riddarfjärden in Stockholm.

(Note: We've forgotten who took these pics and vids, so if you want credit, please let us know!)

NOTCH

This week, Lei Yang, the curator of the Notch festival in China came to visit EMS. Notch stands for NOrdic countries + CHina. Lei Yang was in fact visiting all the Nordic countries to establish more personal contacts with people involved in electronic music. Next festival is in October 2007. We hope this will lead to more collaborations between Northern Europe and China.
/Isabel

Headphone EMS at Nordiska Musikdagar

This year, EMS will be participating at Nordiska Musikdagarna in Norrköping with headphone concerts. Click on the link to find the programme and read more about the event. Besides tape music there will also be some live-electronics where the VJ Kajsa Hellstrand will be contributing. The headphone scene starts at 12 on 29 August and at 1 pm there will be a new version of Lars Gunnar Bodin’s Clouds including new visual material. The festival will take place between 29 Augusti until 1 September.

Swedish electro-acoustic music in Argentina, August 2007

Now it’s time for Swedish electro-acoustic music to be presented in Buenos Aires! Lennart Westman will be lecturing on "De-composing the subject" on his and Gunnar Jutelius’ video "Spiritus" prior to its performance on August 30, within the frame of the exchange project between Latin America and SEAMS (the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in Sweden). Lennart Westman will also diffuse Lars-Gunnar Bodin’s piece "The Enigma Engines", Rolf Enström’s "Figurin" and Pär Frid’s "Il est agréable pour le poète de dormir" during the same internationl festival, Sonoimágenes 2007. The festivalen is held for the eighth time and a mind-boggling two hundred works have been submitted.

EMS at Lövstabruk

Artists from EMS and IDKA participated in an outdoor concert in beautiful Lövstabruk in Northern Uppland, Sweden on August 11, 2007. The concert was arranged by Pär Johansson, Love Mangs and The Lövstabruk Cultural Society, and featured works by Thomas Bjelkeborn, Lars Höjerdahl, Pär Johansson, Love Mangs, Lise-Lotte Norelius, Irène Sahlin, Per Samuelsson, Conny Skoog and Johan Sundberg.

(From left to right, Love Mangs, Lars Höjerdahl and Pär Johansson. For more pictures, please click the image to visit IDKA:s website! You can also view some pictures from Lövstabruk at Flickr.)