Performers & composers

Johan Tallgren

Finnswedish born Johan Tallgren ( born 7/17  1971) has studied composition at the Sibelius-Academy in Finland, University of California San Diego, Ircam  (Paris ), and at Columbia University in NYC  where he resides since 2001.  His main  teachers have been Paavo Heininen,Kaija Saariaho, Brian Ferneyhough and Tristan Murail. In  2002  two pieces by him ( Quatour à Royaumont  and ...strömmande genomlyst. ) were premiered at Ircam, Centre Pompidou  in Paris. The same summer the Australian Ensemble Offspring  performed two of his pieces at the Sydney Opera House. He was  in 2003 the first young finnish composer to visit Tanglewood as a Composer Fellow in 50 years .

His music that consists so far mainly of chamber music has been performed by ensembles like  Avanti!, Court-Circuit, Ensemble Nomad, Ensemble Recherche, Counter)induction and Scharoun to mention a few.  Ensemble Modern  premiered his chamber orchestra piece Tombeau pour New York  in October 2004  in Frankfurt. The Finnish Music festival Musica Nova dedicated  a concert to  his music in March 2005 at the Finnish National Opera.

strömmande genomlyst (7'30'')
(Flow of Translucent)

Premiered at Véronique Ghesquière, Espace de projection, Ircam, Paris, June 15, 2002.

The beginning of the script to the never  realised film “Kärlek utan älskare” (Love without a  lover) of Ingmar Bergman includes a short description of a short still of flow  of translucent water ( Ett strömmande genomlyst vatten). Bergman wrote this complex film 1978 when in his selfchosen exile  in München  but he could never  get funding  for the realisation of it . All the producers refused it.

Main themes of the text is the “missing manuscript” and different “fragments of film”.

He has at other moments in his writing talked about his wish  to “ put together a film consisting of fragments , but  without  having acess to a manuscript.” The question that rises for me  is how to be clear about material  when  you don’t know where it should be?  How clear can a short scene or fragment  be and still remain identifiable. Needless to say as well; when does the picture (sound) change and mutate perceptibly into something else when transformed (processed) into something else. The descriptive words could  here of course come from musicological terminology but the essential questions remain the same, whether you are filmdirector, writer or composer.