News!

Welcome to Hardanger!

Hardanger in May: one of the most breath-taking scenery’s in the world, midst in the beautiful apple tree blooming season. Could there be a more wonderful location for a festival?

This year’s festival is dedicated to Vienna anno 1900, then a capital of an imperial-royal empire that no longer exists, and also, the cultural capital of Europe.

Cikada String Quartet has been invited to play several concerts during the 6 days of the festival. Read more about each of them under Events and at Hardanger Musikkfest’s website (only in Norwegian).

Composer Eivind Buene – nominated for the Norwegian Grammy

We’re very excited to announce that composer Eivind Buene has been nominated for the Norwegian Grammy, Spellemann, for the Cikada album Possible Cities / Essential Landscapes!

Possible Cities / Essential Landscapes is a cycle of chamber music and ensemble works written between 2005 and 2009, commissioned by Cikada and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Eivind Buene (b. Oslo, 1973) studied at the Norwgian Academy of Music from 1992 to 1998. He writes for ensembles, orchestras and soloists, engages frequently in collaborations with improvising musicians. In addition to music, Buene has written critique, essays and novels.

Get your own copy of the album here

Cikada Point4 visits Trondheim and Modena

This spring, Cikada Point4 will visit Trondheim and Modena with the project Ruminations on Sciarrino/Feldman, inspired by two of contemporary music’s most important figures.

Cikada Point 4 began as a fusion between four musicians – Jon Balke, Kenneth Karlsson, Bjørn Rabben, and Ingar Zach. Percussion instruments and conceptual sounds were a mutual passion for the partnership from the beginning. Since February 2006 Cikada Point 4 has worked using different approaches towards improvisation based on compositional elements. Cikada Point 4 uniquely blends two virtuoso duos from contemporary and improvisational music and creates their music partly through improvisation, and partly through samples and fragments from existing music.

Cikada Duo (Bjørn Rabben and Kenneth Karlsson) are seasoned interpreters of postwar modern music, and has worked with many of today’s leading composers. Rhetorical figures from contemporary music are transferred into the realm of improvisation, where the duo is at liberty to shape and mold these residues into something else. It becomes a point of departure for the improvisational acts. The tradition of free improvised music is channeled through Zach and Balke, who between themselves have covered a wide scope of different species on the vast field of improvisation. And both have worked actively through their musicianship to transgress the boundaries between many different musical discourses.

Most of all, the music of Cikada Point 4 is about mapping out new areas for the cohabitation of these different musical minds. And in this process we, as listeners, are invited to explore new musical topologies.

Get more information about the concerts here:

Trondheim 3rd February
Modena 7th February