Performers & composers

Per Magnus Lindborg

Lindborg studied piano, trombone, mathematics, languages, classical music and jazz improvisation in his native Sweden before concentrating on composition. He obtained degrees from Oslo (State Academy) and Paris (Ircam and Sorbonne) and receiveing numerous awards and grants, a.o. the National Young Artist Award twice. He also studied composition privately with Klas Torstensson in the Netherlands. He is a member of the Norwegian Society of Composers since 1996. He currently teaches electroacoustic music composition at École Nationale de Musique in Montbéliard (www.enmenm.tk).

Lindborg’s main research interests lie in musical interactivity and rhetorics as a metaphor for composition. Selected works are “Mao variations” for trio, "khreia" for orchestra, "ReTreTorika" for quartet and electronics and “leçons” for saxophone and computer. An article on “leçons” has been published by Springer Verlag. Lindborg’s pieces are featured on ECM, Daphne, BeeperDesign and Ash International recording labels.

PerMagnus Lindborg is currently working on commissions for "TreeTorika" for the Ensemble Ernst chamber orchestra, scheduled for Oslo’s Ultima festival, and “Immortal no more”, an experimental-improvisational project curated by French association Syntono aiming at a piece for two percussionist, two pianists and electronics. More information at www.pmpm.tk

rgbmix1-SAXCON

Will be premiered at NMD 2006.

rgbmix (red-green-blue-mix) is the family name of a group of pieces for small ensembles where the musicians know each other well. There are two pieces in the family:

  • rgbmix1-SAXCON
    (2003, VD 10'-14', MIC), for Norwegian Saxofon Concentus
  • rgbmix2-PUGNUS
    (2003, VD 6'-8', MIC), for Norwegian Poing Trio

In both "rgbmix1-SAXCON" and "rgbmix2-PUGNUS", the form is based on a notion of "social and material" relations that the musicians might have, on the one hand, with the score and, on the other, with the group as a whole.

The relations between the musicians, both in terms of "abstract social" and in "musical" constitute the prerequisite for and the fundament for the main structure. Following to a compact set of compositional rules, a network of related performance situations is created. Each node corresponds to a particular setting of, for example, instrumentation, social relation and musical colour. Through this network can then be traced several paths, which correspond to different interpretations of the composition. One can imagine a two-dimensional space with material relations on one of the axes and social relations on the other. Given this scheme, all situations of dynamical performance involving both predefined material (score) and on-the-fly decision-making (improvisation) can be worked out.

In SAXCON there are 51 such nodes and the network can be visualized in 3-dimensional as a deltahedron (or, to put it in less mathematical terms, as a pyramid of 4 apples). I define two axes of improvisational liberty, one corresponding to "social" relations, and the other to "material" relations. Each axis has three degrees, so that there are, in total, nine categories of interaction-relation. In the composition, the categories are employed quite freely within the framework of the formal situations. The situations are grouped into twelve segments, the order of which will be determined by the players during a performance. Also, segments can be played more than once.

In PUGNUS, there are 43 nodes and the network is congruent to that of a triangular dipyramid (two SAXCON-structures glued to one another). I define 26 relations symmetrically over the space of the three musicians and two basic playing modes, i.e. notation/interpretation and improvisation. There are nine segments with different kinds of instructions, ranging from completely interpretated to "completely improvised". The musicians must negociate the degree of liberty in relation both to the material (the written score) and the music of the group as a whole. As a result, no two performances of PUGNUS sound the same. PUGNUS is latin for "fist", which in french is "poing".

The musical material in SAXCON is in part derived from an earlier piece, "Danses Condensées" for solo marimba but this is not immediately obvious - indeed it is not important if it is. Some of the SAXCON material reappears in PUGNUS, in a bit more audibly recognizable way, which is intended, and would have the potential of offering a fusion of the two pieces, in some way that I have at this point not at all investigated.

In parallel with the entirely acoustical rgbmix pieces I am in the process of constructing parallel versions in the form of an interactive computer program, which mixes recordings and synthesis according to the compositional rules and the preferences of the user (computer performer/listener).