Kent Olofsson - Composer
Kent Olofsson is a composer and an artist in the field of performing arts with an extensive artistic output that spans a broad range of genres, ensemble types, art forms and contexts, including music for orchestra, chamber music, electronic music, theatre, dance performances, opera, radiophonic art, rock music and music for film.
Since 2021 he is professor of performing arts for the profile area Concept and Composition at the Stockholm University of the Arts.
NEWS: new projects and upcoming performances 2023 - 24
Dying Young - an emo-opera. Classical opera arias in electronic guises
3 October Folkoperan.
Previous performances 2023:
24 and 25 August, 17:00, Parkteatern, Sergels torg, Stockholm
Over and over again, straight into the death of love - a medley of death arias and broken hearts where the soprano stands alone on stage to die a thousand times. In a rebellion against identity and pain, Dying Young is an electronic journey into the soprano's innermost being. The performance was premiered at Folkoperan in may 2022.
Maja Frydén, soprano. Director, concept: Sanna Colling/Sad Girls
Scenography, costume: Toni Tora Botwid. Dramaturge: Alexander Charlamov
Masque: Frida Ullander
Tickets:
https://folkoperan.se/uppsattningar/dying-young/
Vipeholm - Tiden före framtiden
(Music for the theatre play at Stadsteatern Stockholm)
Vipeholm 1940. Erik was ten years old when he was sent from his family outside Luleå to the so-called 'sinnesslöanstalten' outside Lund. He never returns. The play by Lucas Svensson follows inmates, relatives and doctors inside the institution. Actors include among others Lennart Jähkel, Sofia Ledarp and Sven Ahlström. Directed by Carl Johan Karlson.
Premiere 2 September at Klarascenen, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. Further performances throughout September and October 2023.
https://kulturhusetstadsteatern.se/teater/vipeholm-tiden-fore-framtiden
Labor
A film by Tove Pils
[Music for the film]
Stockholm premiere 6 October 2023 at Cinemaqueer Film Festival.
Info and tickets:
A journey from a small Swedish town to the wide vistas of San Francisco becomes the start of an exploration of the limits of wage work and sex work in a queer context.
Premiere 2 February 2023 at Gothenburg International Film Festival.
International premiere at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, March 2023.
During Spring 2023 the film was also presented at:
Sunny Bunny, Kyiv International Film Festival, Ukraine
Lovers Film Festival, Torino, Italy (awarded best documentary!)
Roxie theatre, Frameline, San Francisco.
Oslo Fusion International Film Festival, Norway
Faroe Island Int'l Minority Film Festival
Cinema Queer México
ZONEN
- a project by Nina Jeppsson and Kent Olofsson (2021-2024)
Zonen (The zone) is a liminal artistic work that moves between film, music and performing arts, between documentary and fiction, between art and life, spirit and matter. We use Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker as a method, map and guide. In it, a small expedition enters the Forbidden Zone, a dangerous and capricious place that changes depending on the travellers' state of mind.
Our work is a raw documentation of a mystical journey and of an art process, which at the same time constitutes and embodies this journey. We follow the director Nina in a spiritual quest that takes her to inner and outer places and encounters. The work is filled with fictional 'rabbit holes'.
The visual world includes portals and mine shafts, streams, fog, fire, earth, trees, the starry sky and rain. The soundscape includes swarms of particles and insects, grand choirs, art rock and conversations that intersect like streams.
Our hope is that the work will serve as a map for others who are currently wandering around the intermediate state of the Zone, in an uncertain future.
The film have a planned premiere for Spring 2024, when also music from the project will be released. A first version of the project was presented at Ställbergs Gruva in the summer of 2022.
Artists involved: Marta Khomenko (light), Karolina Pajak (filming), Johannes Ferm Winkler (film, editing, projections), Jeroen Pool (film editing), Mats Sahlström (scenography), Raimo Nyman (light), Johannes Rydinger (filming), Maria Lundqvsit (costume)
Kent Olofsson's music has been performed by ensembles and orchestras like Ensemble Recherche, Symphonieorchesters des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Swedish Radio Choir, KammarensembleN, Klangforum Wien, Lipparella, Oslo Sinfonietta, Norrbotten Neo and Avantii! with conductors as Lothar Zagrosek, Gustavo Dudamel, Mario Venzago, Charles Hazlewood, Fredrik Malmberg and Franck Ollu. He has written for musicians as Stefan Östersjö (guitar), Nguyễn Thanh Thủy (đàn tranh), Ngô Trà My (đàn bầu), Moritz Ernst (piano/harpsichord), Jonny Axelsson (percussion), Ivo Nilsson (trombone), Fredrik Ullén (piano) and James Crabb (Accordion).
Projects and previous performances 2023
Nina Jeppsson and Kent Olofsson - music from Zonen and other performances, Gylleboverket 5 August 2023
A concert performance at the 5th International Performance Festival at Gylleboverket, Simrishamn on 5th August
Link: https://gylleboverket.se/x-2023/performancefestival
from Champs d'étoiles - music for viola da gamba and violin
At Kalvfestivalen, 8 and 9 August 2023
Members of Lipparella, Louise Agnani - viola da gamba and
Anna Lindal - violin
https://kalvfestival.se/wp/konserter/ensemble-lipparella/
Violin with Þytur' for solo violin and electronics.
Performed at Inter Arts Center on 18 June 2023
as a part of Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir's defense
of her thesis "HÉR! An Exploration of Artistic Agency"
'Violin with Þytur' for solo violin and electronics. Written by Kent Olofsson (violin score) and Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir (electronics). Performed by Maja Jantar (voice), Angela Rawlings (voice) and Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir (violin, voice). Produced by Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir.
Concepts of ...
Electroacoustic music by Kent Olofsson and Jakob Riis, 29 April 2023, IAC Red Room, Intonal Festival Malmö
Concepts of: is a cross disciplinary meeting between electroacoustic, acousmatic, spatial music, particle physics and aerosol technology. The ideas and material for the two new compositions presented in this concert are developed in an interactive exchange of concepts and between scientists and composers.Accepted models of various phenomena in the respective fields of the participants, are questioned and explored through four-dimensional, electronic, acousmatic compositions, in interaction with scientific models, in an intense and nuanced experience of spatial music and sound creating new frameworks that can mutually inspire.
The pieces by Olofsson presented at the concert are part of the project ZONEN
Christina Isaxon, scientist, Leif Lönnblad, scientist
Kent Olofsson, composer, Jakob Riis, composer
Concepts of: are supported by Sound Environment Centre, Lund University
Selma Lagerlöf's novel "En Herrgårdssägen" (A Manor House Tale) features the disguised bat Mrs Sorrow. She is the landlady who demands misery as collateral from her tenants. Mrs Sorrow has a dual nature, we both cling to her and want to escape her. She has the power to imprison and freeze us, but when we meet her face to face, we are fundamentally transformed.
Premiere 18 march 2023
Bearbetning och regi: Nina Jeppsson
Actor: Anna Azcárate,
Music and orchestra: Kent Olofsson och Nina Jeppsson
Costume: Maria Lundqvist -
Light: Marta Khomenko
Attributes: Maria Skeppström
Dramaturge: Anton Österlund -
Choreographer: Tanja Tuurala
Kris
Based on the book by Karin Boye, directed by Maja Salomonsson
[Music for the performance]
New period of performances at Stadsteatern Vällingby with premiere 17 March 2023.
With Frida Beckman and Beri Gerwise
Scenography Johanna Mårtensson, Light Raimo Nyman, makeup Eva Ritzell
Underjorden (The Underworld)
sonic art theatre for actor, prerecorded voices, clarinet, electric guitar, electronics
Text by Annika Nyman
Music and direction by Kent Olofsson
Dramaturge and director Jörgen Dahlqvist
Actor Malin Molin, Robert Ek clarinets, Stefan Östersjö guitars
First performance at Acusticum, Piteå 19 January 2023
In the Roman myth of Psyche and Cupid, the princess Psyche loses her lover after doing the forbidden: lighting the lamp and looking at the deity. In her attempts to find him, she is thwarted by her jealous mother-in-law, the goddess Venus, and is eventually forced to cross the River Styx, past the three-headed threshold guardian and down to Persephone, mistress of the realm of the dead.
The Underworld is an radioplay that travels inwards, downwards, to be devoured by darkness and the unknown. It is a journey through ancient and contemporary legends and myths and touches on the horror of realising the limits of existence, the fear of dissolution and the unbearable acceptance of one's own mortality.
Since 2009 Kent Olofsson has largely been active in the field of performing arts, writing and performing music for theatre, dance performances, opera and also film. He has been collaborating with Teatr Weimar and the playwright, director and video artist Jörgen Dahlqvist. Together they have created more than 25 productions including the highly acclaimed "Hamlet II: Exit Ghost", "A Language at War", and "Arrival Cities: Hanoi". For many years he has collaborated with actor, director and writer Nina Jeppsson, creating works such as "Independence Day", "På spaning efter den tid som flytt (In Search of Lost Time)" and "Zonen". He has worked choreographer and dancers such as Miguel Cortes, Maria Naidu and Efva Lilja. In 2020 his opera Alan, about the scientist Alan Turing, was premiered. In 2018 he defended his thesis in artistic research, "Composing the Performance: An exploration of musical composition as a dramaturgical strategy in contemporary intermedial theatre."
