Author: HKKS

Since joining in on the 10-years anniversary concert with violinist Florian Donderer and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff at Sendesaal Bremen, I am now back home preparing for the Spannungen Festival in Heimbach.

This year at Spannungen will see many premieres for me. It will my first time doing Naturale by Luciano Berio for viola, percussion and voice with Elisabeth Kufferath on viola. As well as Run Chime for solo percussion and string quartet by Dave Maric with violinists Antje Weithaas and Florian Donderer, Volker Jacobsen on viola and Maximilian Hornung on cello.
Also, a first time for me playing Tre pezzi and Tre altri pezzi for clarinet and cimbalom by György Kurtág with clarinettist Sharon Kam.
At the end of the festival, I will play 8 duos by György Kurtág for violin and cimbalom with violinist Christian Tetzlaff.
And of course the late night party concert, children concerts and most importantly meeting up again with dear colleagues, friends and a fantastically devoted audience!

This autumn has been in the sign of the Cimbalom. First playing with John Adams and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra the extraordinaire Scheherazade 2.0, the 50 minutes violin concerto with the huge cimbalom obligato included. And then, before the concert, Mr.Adams approached me and asking me to join him in Rome, Italy, the week after to perform his oratorio “The Gospel according to the other Mary”, with solo cimbalom included. So I had to learn it and play three concerts within a week with the splendid Orchestra and choir Academia Santa Cecilia in Rome.

This week I am new-premiering Øyvind Mæland´s “Songs in between Barren Landscapes” at Ny Musikk, Oslo. This music gives me a unique opportunity to explore my cimbalom even further, using odd pizzicato flageolets and harmonics to create a sound landscape unheard to me. I feel lucky!

This week Hans-Kristian will record Lament – concerto for percussion, choir & electronics by Lars Petter Hagen, together with Asbjørn Blokkum Flø on electronics and The Norwegian Soloist´s Choir conducted by Grete Pedersen.

The recording is done by BIS, who also recorded HK´s first solo album OPEN, which won the Norwegian Grammy “Spellemannsprisen” in 2004.

Lament was commissioned by Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen, with the support of Arts Council Norway, and is a part of his Nordic Percussion Concertos. Lament was premiered in Oslo with the same lineup in January 2017.