Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen (1969)

Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen trained as a cellist and composer at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Århus, studying with Poul Ruders, Karl Aage Rasmussen, Olav Anton Thommesen, Henryk Gorecki in Poland and Bent Sørensen. In 1997 he was awarded the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant. In recent years he has become a sought-after composer working with many prominent Danish and foreign ensembles.

A quote from 2001 shows the sensitivity and energy that lies beneath the surface in his music: “-- I have always observed my times and let what I saw penetrate beneath my skin. Against some of what I believe I have seen I have formed counter-images or counter-ideas of other states of being that I have considered more dignified for mankind. ‘Freedom images’, you could call them. At other times it’s about imprisonment, a state that our civilization believes itself to have been spared. I think that is an illusion, and I’m sure that certainty about these things is to be found somewhere in the subconscious.” Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen is striving for a kind of music that corresponds to fundamental conditions of life.

Steinfeld

I have over the years wondered how it might be possible to get close to a real time composition process and still maintain all the values of the thinking process, which makes the difference between composition and improvisation. Composing Steinfeld in 2004 I tried to act like a visual artist with pencil and paper, capturing the vision of the piece in a drawing “flux”. This vision was then the basis of the composition process.

The vision turned out to be that of an imprisoned being escaping into movement, stopping again, repeating this pattern in various ways, never really capable of finding the freedom it is longing for. This is all reflected in the creative process and in the material of the piece.

I consider the concerto a condition, in which music can take form. And like the ancient earth gives us the conditions for modern life, I see the concerto as one of many conditions, in which modern music can take form. The status of the soloist is of no importance to me, it can be different for each new piece. I do not oppose this form. I would like to look upon conditions of music (the available sounds and combinations) as gifts, like I would like to consider the places I unfold my life gifts. I will have to say that it is not all gifts that I am able to make something of.