your greedbagpress release - den øverste toppen på en blåmalt flaggstang
The new studio album from this increasingly exciting quartet boasts yet another Pippi Longstocking related title. This free spirited and anti authoritarian character is one of the most loved and wellknown from the late, great Swedish author of childrens books, Astrid Lindgren. It translates "The very top of a bluepainted flagpole" and on reflection it gets clearer and clearer why the four young women (all still in their twenties) in Spunk so easily will identify with such a character. Coming from a formal, academic music education, it hasn´t always been so easy to break almost every rule in the book, and this is exactly what they relentlessly have been doing since forming back in 1996.
Followers of free improvisation, however, will welcome the emergence of this radical Norwegian group. Think of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the days when Julie Tippetts and/or Maggie Nicols were singing in it, or the Music Improvisation Company with Christine Jeffrey, or Gunter Hampel’s Galaxie Dream band with Jeanne Lee. Spunk pulls such collective creative impulses into the 21st century. It’s a strong band, whose music of interlocking sounds, sensitively realized, draws the listener in.
As they say: "Spunk has had an extraordinary career so far. We started out by exploring whatever we found interesting in the musical field, and after approximately one year we started presenting our work in public. Since then, a lot of people have visited our concerts and seminars. Spunk’s musical field is hard to describe, because we’re four musicians with very different backgrounds – spanning classical, contemporary, jazz, pop, rock, techno, even country – who shape a musical landscape that is new for most people, even for well-trained musicians. We have played in very different kinds of settings: theatre music, improvisation to pictures in an art museum, participation in classical concerts as well as our own concerts in jazz clubs, techno clubs and festivals abroad and in Norway, collaborations with musicians and composers of various musical styles, improvisation seminars, film music and music for art installations..."
Singer and electronics player (and sometimes violinist and theremin player) Maja Ratkje has exceptionally impressive credentials. Her composition teachers have included some of the great contemporary composers including Sofia Gubaidulina, Louis Andriessen, Klaus Huber and Kaija Saariaho, and her own works have won international prizes, amongst them First Prize at the Gaudeamus International Composers Meeting, the Norwegian Edvard Prize (for Composition of the Year) and the International Rostrum of Composers Prize in Paris. Ratkje is a member of the Norwegian Society of Composers, and her pieces have played by distinguished ensembles including the Oslo Sinfonietta and Cikada. Her composition "Gagaku Variations" has been recorded for inclusion on the forthcoming ECM debut by Norwegian accordeonist Frode Haltli.
Ratkje is also a member of the electronic improvising trio (x,y,z) as well as electronic duo Fe-mail with fellow spunkster Hild Sofie Tafjord.
Trumpeter Kristin Andersen plays with diverse jazz orchestras and big bands and is also a composer, whose teachers have included Rolf Wallin, Ragnar Søderlind and Lasse Thoresen. Her composition "Bit 1" for cello and voice was chosen for the 60th anniversary concert of Ny Musikk, the Norwegian new music association. Andersen also occasionally works as a studio engineer.
Lene Grenager studied cello and composition at the Norwegian State Academy of Music. She made additional composition studies in London with Judith Weir and has attended seminars and workshops with composers including Iannis Xenakis, Brian Ferneyhough, and Helmut Lachenmann. When not performing with Spunk, Grenager works as a freelance musician, composer and conductor.
French horn player Hild Sofie Tafjord is active as an improviser in jazz and other contexts. She is a member of the Trondheim Kunstorkester, led by saxophonist Trygve Seim, which recently released the much acclaimed "Different Rivers" on ECM. With other members of Spunk she has also played with San Francisco improvising drummer Gino Robair and she works with Maja Ratkje in the aforementioned duo Fe-mail.
Free collective improvising is one of the most demanding ways of making music: the pitfalls are many – self-absorption, incoherence, certain standardized "gestures" of free jazz, lack of dynamics, humourlessness – but Spunk are alert to the dangers. Bold, sometimes witty, always alert, they make engaging music, and keep the sound of surprise alive. They have no fear of bringing the music to the brink of anarchy - they are interested in extremes as well as subtleties - but their instincts as composers-in-action also serve them well. Most of all, perhaps, Spunk convince by the force of their own convictions. As Maja Ratkje says: "Music has to be strong. It deals with communication in an extremely direct fashion, within its own language. This is something that makes it vulnerable, but also, potentially, a bearer of great poetic power."
Spunk have performed at the high-profile MusikTriennale Festival in Cologne, the ISME Festival in Alberta, Canada, Ultima, the contemporary music festival in Oslo and Taktlos in Basel and Zürich. This autumn they will be profiled at an Edinburgh festival and play at the Fertiliser festival at London´s ICA.
Maja Ratkjes debut solo album will be released by rune grammofon in the late autumn.
release:den øverste toppen på en blåmalt flaggstang
label: Rune Grammofon