Ghost Trance Music

nyMusikk was founded in 1938 and is Norway’s most important organisation for contemporary music, both inside and outside the country’s borders. Together with one of Norway’s most visionary art centres Henie Onstad Art Center (HOK), nyMusikk is realising the performance of Anthony Braxton’s work Ghost Trance Music by the Ictus Ensemble and the dancers Rosas Toolbox in autumn 2024.

In the early 1990s, Anthony Braxton attended several courses on Native American music at Wesleyan University, where he taught. The subject was a post-colonial ritual from the late 19th century called the Ghost Dance, in which various tribes came together to make contact with their deceased ancestors in hour-long circle dances or Ghost Dances. These experiences had a great influence on Braxton and were an important inspiration for what would become Ghost Trance Music. Ghost Trance Music is an extensive score and, according to the Ictus Ensemble, could be seen as a kind of toolbox. At its core is a never-ending melody with no rhythmic variations, alongside a compendium of materials chosen by the performers, including various sub-compositions, improvisations and other ways of surprising and ‘mixing’ each other.

Braxton’s music has received shockingly little attention in the Norwegian contemporary music scene. Ghost Trance Music has the potential to reach a diverse audience and create connections between different fields and institutions, including between genres from jazz to avant-garde and between music and contemporary dance. The project also offers the opportunity to bring together local musicians with international artists such as Rosas Toolbox and Ictus Ensemble. In addition to the concert, which is sponsored by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, there will be discussion rounds, post-concert talks with the artists, a lecture and a podcast.

Further information:
nymusikk.no

Date

November 2, 2024
Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden