Updates
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Orchestra of Speech solo release
I am really thrilled to finally be releasing a recording of my solo project the Orchestra of Speech. The recording will be available in a limited edition vinyl and as high resolution digital download as well as through the usual streaming platforms. Release date is 13 October 2023.
LP and download will be available from Particular Recordings Collective and bandcamp. -
Two new releases with Mats Gustafsson
I am playing on two new releases with Mats Gustafsson just coming out september 15: The large-scale HIDROS 9 MIRRORS recorded at the Polish Radio Studio in Warsaw last October, and the smaller Ensemble E Opus One recorded in Lublin, Poland in may 2022. Both projects have played at festivals in Poland and Norway, with Ensemble E soon to go on another tour in Poland.
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Organotopia
Exciting to be part of Organotopia at Ultima, Oslo Contemporary Music Festival 2022, a grandiose work by composer and organ player Nils Henrik Asheim in and around the Paulus Church in Oslo, including a 12-hour marathon of non-stop organ music with 8 organ players on every kind of organs from the full pipe organ in the church, the fantastic ‘portable’ L’Orgue du Voyage by Jean-Baptiste Monnot, to smaller portatives, harmoniums, Hammond organ and other electric organs, as well as groups of singers, dancers, architecture, outdoor live remixing, live video art, a city walk and anything else going on around the Birkelunden park in Oslo.
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Skjerve & Formo & friends
I am releasing a recording together with my wife Heidi, with some classic love songs from the jazz repertoire to keep the spirit up during these pandemic times. Available on on Valentines day, February 14 2022, on particular recordings and the usual streaming services.
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New releases with Steamdome and Solid!
There have not been that many live performances during the past year of pandemic state of emergency, but two recordings that i am participating on have finally been released after having been postponed for some time: Steamdome II - the Hypogean by Ola Kvernberg, and Woodworks by Solid! featuring John Ellis on saxophone and bass clarinet.
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Practice Sharing
I am contributing to Practice Sharing — an online presentation of expanded approaches to language-based practice within the field of artistic research. My contribution presents my artistic research project the Orchestra of Speech in this context of language-based artistic research practice.
The presentation with over 70 individual contributions are available on the Research Catalog -
Live Interfaces 2020
I helped organising the International Conference of Live Interfaces (ICLI), this time held at NTNU in March 2020, also contributing with a performance with my ‘Orchestra of Speech’ solo concept. The conference finished on the very day before Norway went in to a pandemic lockdown along with the rest of the world. All the interesting papers and video recordings of all performances at the conference are available in the conference proceedings.
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Nypan trio in China
Øyvind Nypan trio went to China in September, playing at different clubs in Beijing and Chengdu, in addition to doing workshops and masterclasses at the Beijing Midi School of Music and Sichuan Conservatory of Music.
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Mats Gustafsson Score Exhibition
The nyMusikk organisation that I am part of put on a mini-festival and score exhibition with Mats Gustafsson during the last week of August. The week-long event was held at Trondheim Kunsthall, where over the course of several nights a selection of new and old pieces of Gustafsson were performed, along with a display of his graphical scores. I participated on the last performance of a new piece entitled Hidros o.T. which also was recorded and will be released later.
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Orchestra of Speech in New York
It was great to bring my Orchestra of Speech solo project to New York City as an installation piece during the 2019 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), jointly organized with the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), with events based around the New York University campus downtown NYC. The Orchestra of Speech installation was situated at the Bobst library’s Avery Fischer Media centre, at the south-eastern corner of Washington Square Park.
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InnerSound New Arts Festival
On September 1 I was happy to be invited to perform a solo set with my Orchestra of Speech project at the InnerSound New Arts Festival in Bucharest, Romania.
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Ola Kvernberg’s Steamdome
Earlier this year we released a recording with the Steamdome project of Ola Kvernberg that I am part of, with the music that was first premiered at Trondheim Jazzfest and the Molde Jazz Festival in 2016. This summer we embarked on a row of festivals with a longer tour in the fall. Fantastic to be part of this drum-driven 7 piece instrumental steam engine of a band!
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NIME 2018
In July I presented some aspects of my work with the Orchestra of Speech project at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference, this year held at VirginiaTech in Blacksburg, VA.
I contributed with a short paper and a poster presentation where I presented a scaled down version of the sound installation version of the project, with telephone interaction encouraging audiences to pick up the phone and interact with speech recordings being orchestrated out simultaneously to transducers mounted on a selection of acoustic instruments. Also got a mention from Gregory Taylor at Cycling74 in his blog report from the conference.
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New release Nypan Trio
New release with Øyvind Nypan on Particular Recordings Collective out may 24 2018 (It was recorded this february, so only 3 months from recording date to release date!)
To mark the occation, Nypan Trio played a tour with performances in Norway, Copenhagen and London.
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Particular Recordings Label Night
The record label I started in 2013 to release my triple album Hammond Dialogues has now grown into a larger co-operative of like minded musicians, releasing jazz, improvised and composed contemporary music from a community of professional musicians with a connection to the city of Trondheim, Norway. Particular Recordings Collective celebrated five years and the release of three new recordings by hosting a Label Night at Dokkhuset Scene, May 15 2018.
The program showcased many of the artists and projects currently on the label, with 8 different constellations playing a short set each: Team Hegdal, Daniel Formo’s Orchestra of Speech, Alpaca Ensemble, en en en, Bjørn Marius Hegge Trio, H H H, Oscar Grönberg 3, and especially for the occasion – PRC all star ensemble.
Videoes of all performances:
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Orchestra of Speech final presentation
In november 2017 I presented the final performance with my doctoral artistic research project Orchestra of Speech. The performance consisted of three parts: a self-playing sound installation, an improvised solo set, and an ensemble improvisation. Video recordings of all three parts are available on my research project documentation site
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Trondheim Jazz Orchestra in Skopje
I have already played a couple of shows with the new project that the excellent bassplayer and composer Ole Morten Vågan has made as the new leader/artistic director of the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, both at the Illios festival in Harstad, Norway, and at Reykjavik Jazz Festival in Iceland. The video below is from a performance at the Skopje Jazz Festival in Macedonia.
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Sinfonietta piece
I was invited to contribute with a school workshop for a project with the Trondheim Sinfonietta, based on the work I am doing in my doctoral artistic research project Orchestra of Speech. The whole research project is based on improvisation, so I did not compose a finished piece but tried to find a way to let the school children make musical ideas based on different speech genres. As a part of the workshop I made a short piece with graphical scores, that was also included in next days evening performance at Trondheim Kunsthall. This performance can be viewed on my research blog: https://orchestraofspeech.com/blog/sinfonietta-piece/
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NTNU jazz ensemble plays Tre Små Kinesere
Me and my wife Heidi Skjerve got a commission to arrange the music of a local pop group of choice for the NTNU Jazz Ensemble, an ensemble consisting of students at the jazz department of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. We chose the music of the pop trio “Tre Små Kinesere”, and arranged a selection of their classic tunes for the ensemble. The music was performed at the Trondheim Jazz Festival in May 2017, with Ulf Risnes and Øystein Hegge from Tre Små present in the audience.
Dedicated music photographer Thor Egil Leirtrø took som great photos of the performance available at his blog:
https://thoregilphoto.com/2017/05/13/2017-05-13-skjerve-formo-vs-tre-sma-kinesere-mntnu-jazzensemble-dokkhuset/ -
IRCAM forum presentation
It was nice to come to Paris and present my doctoral artistic research project Orchestra of Speech at the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique).
The presentation was a part of the Ircam Forum Workshop, and can be viewed in full in the video at my research project blog: http://orchestraofspeech.com/blog/ircam-forum/
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Speech Music Symposium
In December 2016 I organized an international symposium in Trondheim on the subject of Speech and Music, more specifically on music based on speech. The event featured performances and talks by composers and musicians such as Trevor Wishart, Alessandro Bosetti, Alex Nowitz in addition to myself (unfortunately Sten Sandell had to cancel). This symposium was organized as a part of my doctoral research fellowship, and is documented in full on my research project site at http://orchestraofspeech.com/blog/music-speech-symposium
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Håvard Stubø Trio
I am part of a new trio with Håvard Stubø on guitar and Torstein Lofthus on drums, originally put together for the Arctic Arts Festival (Festspillene i Nordnorge) in Harstad this summer. The clip below is from a performance at Circa in Tromsø in November.
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Organ Night
I was glad to be invited back to Stavanger Concert Hall by house organist Nils Henrik Asheim for another round of “Organ Night”, this time as a part of a celebration of the writer Obstfelder.
In addition to Nils Henrik on the grand pipe organ both me and Ståle Storløkken joined in on two additional Hammond B3 organs for a mighty organ trio to fill the concert hall.
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Harpefoss Poetry Festival
I was really happy to be invited to Harpefoss Poetry Festival, to perform with my solo concept “Orchestra of Speech”. This is the result of my ongoing doctoral artistic research project into the relationship between speech and music, and the performance at Harpefoss was one of the first performances with a full setup of 16 channel hybrid electroacoustic transducer/instrument orchestra. The performance can be viewed in full at my project blog: http://orchestraofspeech.com/blog/harpefoss-poetry-festival/
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Soundbyte in Mexico
Together with vocalist Tone Åse I was invited to perform with the electro-noir-metal duo Soundbyte for the Festival Internacional Chihuahua in Mexico. We were to play a huge outdoor stage in Chihuahua, but unfortunately the worst rainfall for ages hit just as we were getting ready to play and the whole show had to be cancelled. But we did a successful performance in Ciudad Juárez the day before so the trip was not completely in vain.
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Great Learning Orchestra plays Cardew
In June I am playing with the Great Learning Orchestra, a Swedish ensemble collective that has been performing various contemporary classics for the ast 17 years. During 10 days we will perform the whole choral work “The Great Learning” by British composer Cornelius Cardew with performances in Trondheim, Stockholm and Helsinki. This 7 part 9 hour work is seldom performed in its entirety, and all parts have probably never been performed like this in the nordic countries at least.
The Trondheim performances of paragraph 3 and 4 was organized as part of a symposium on Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, with living legends of the AMM John Tilbury, Keith Rowe and Howard Skempton visiting to talk about their experiences with playing this music and working with Cardew.Below is a video of paragraph 3 and 4, performed in Lademoen Church in Trondheim with me playing the church organ:
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Ola Kvernberg “Steamdome”
Great to be part of violinist Ola Kvernberg’s new project called “Steamdome”, a rhythmical machine featuring three drummers, two organs, bass, guitars and violin. Coming out of Ola’s work with music for movies, this steam engine of a group is painting wide horizons with it’s cinematic music. Premiered at Trondheim Jazz Festival in May 2016 and to be played at Molde Int. Jazzfestival in July as well as a planned recording session and tour during the coming year.
Clip from Trondheim Jazz Fest 2016: -
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra with Sissel Vera Pettersen and John Hollenbeck
Did a great premiere of a new work co-composed by saxophonist Sissel Vera Pettersen and american drummer John Hollenbeck, written for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and performed at the Trondheim Jazz festival may 2016. Will be performed at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in July as well, hopefully with more performances coming up!
Here is a short clip from the Trondheim performance. -
Orchestra of Speech
In the past year I have been busy as a research fellow in the doctoral level “Norwegian Artistic Research Programme”, an academic program funding practice based artistic research. My research project is called “The music of language and language of music”, and deals with the musical content of speech, trying to utilize it as a direct source for creating new music. This idea is a kind of continuation of the way I have used dialogue as a method and metaphor in my “Hammond Dialogue” concert series and recordings earlier.
I have set up a researcher’s blog at http://orchestraofspeech.com where this project will be documented with music, findings, thoughts and background research. -
New release by Formo Tre & Metall
The new record “Amor & Labor” by Formo Tre & Metall is now available as CD and download!
The recording was listed on Europe Jazz Media Chart for october, and a nice early review in Bergens Tidende describes the music as a “vital and engaging drive of improvisation” by a “strong and original band”
Some more nice reviews:
AllAboutJazz.com: “Formo Tre & Metall is an excellent quartet with a bold vision.”
Adresseavisen: “He plays the B3 with a scope and a melodic sensitivity that makes it a joy to listen to”
Dagsavisen: “Det er ei sprudlande oppkome av eit album”
Side2.no: “Formo has created a band and a sound unlike anything else on the musical horizon”
Dag og Tid: “Det er noko stoffleg og handgripeleg i musikken som er både uvanleg og tankevekkjande” -
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra in Canada & US
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra’s “Sidewalk Comedy” show baffled crowds at the jazz festivals of Ottawa and Rochester NY this weekend, with absurd physical theater and 1930’s inspired jazz performed in this avant garde blend of genres and artforms.
Reviews: Rochester City Newspaper, D&C
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Organ night in Stavanger
Great music last night with Nils Henrik Asheim playing the huge organ in the newly finished Stavanger Concert Hall, beautifully lit with live video projections. I also had the best view with my hammond placed neatly on the balcony. Also playing this evening was Adrian Tvedten on synthesizers, Pål Asle Pettersen on electronics, and Unni Løvlied singing with Liv Runesdatter and Stine Janvin Motland accompanying on glass. More at Stavanger aftenblad
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Formo Tre & Metall
After a great debut tour my new quartet Formo Tre & Metall will be recording its first album in march. For now, you can check out some live recordings
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Triple album released
My new triple album “Hammond Dialogues” is now available for download at subradar.no and iTunes, also available as limited edition triple-CD for mail order by contacting me directly.
Some reviews are also starting to show up:
Bergens Tidende: “This is electroacoustic contemporary improvisation rich in ideas”;
Svenska Dagbladet: “in the dynamic duo (…) they make the sounds both sparkle and shine mightily”
allaboutjazz.com: “The quartet becomes (…) a free improvised unit of the best kind, formulating captivating, rich language and almost telepathic interplay”
bitaites.org: “Hammond B3 is a greater benefit to mankind than were penicillin, air conditioning and microwave. Daniel confirms this with absolute distinction” -
hammond dialogues
I will play a series of concerts during the spring of 2012 entitled ‘hammond dialogues’, engaging many different musicians playing instruments not usually heard accompanying the hammond organ. Performances will be based on improvisation and the aim is to put myself in situations where I can explore the new sonic and instrumental possibilities that occur when meeting these different instruments and personalities. See the calendar for exact dates, which will include duo performances with musicians such as Nils Henrik Asheim on church organ, Sidsel Endresen on vocals, Kresten Osgood on drums, and with a string trio consisting of Lene Grenager on cello, Bergmund Skaslien on Viola, Michael Duch on contrabass, and a wind trio with Rudi Mahall on bass clarinet, Bjørnar Habbestad on flute and Eirik Hegdal on saxophone.
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new release from Kobert
Kobert’s last and final recording “Off the Hook” is now released on Øra fonogram.
It is available as digital download on iTunes and also as a very limited special edition CD that can be bought by contacting me directly.
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Visitor – Solid & Seamus Blake
A new recording by Solid featuring Seamus Blake on saxophone is now out on parallel records.
Available on CD now, and in addition to the usual mp3 on iTunes and such it will also be possible to buy hi-res downloads from gubemusic.com
