MUSIC

Nameless Sound is Houston’s most vital presenter of cutting-edge creative music, free improvisation, avant-garde jazz, electro-acoustic improvisation, new music and uncategorizable sound-making. This season opens with three Nameless Sound premieres, representing a wide range of world-class artists.

Forde Haltli/Trygve Seim (duo) Maja Ratkje (solo) Frode Haltli - (Norway) accordion Trygve Seim - (Norway) saxophone Maja Ratkje - (Norway) voice, electronics.   Presented in collaboration with the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in Houston.

An extremely prolific artist, Maja Ratkje’s (pictured) wide-ranging creativity has been revealed in an explosion of work over the past 15 years. Ratkje is an artist who clearly sees no boundaries. She is a free improvisor, but also a composer of orchestral and chamber works. Her primary instruments are voice and electronics. But her astonishing vocal dexterity and range of sounds might confuse the listener as to which they are hearing. Her conservatory training may be clearly evident in much of her work; but her credentials for noise-making would not be debated by many.

But this particular noise, while truly anarchic, has a beautifully detailed and meticulous quality. There is a personal humor and strange beauty that mark her work across the board, affirming Ratkje as an artist whose uniqueness and personality are identifiable in any context (regardless of medium). The caliber and wide-range of her work can be testified by a list of her collaborators and ensembles, who include: SPUNK, Trinacria, Jaap Blonk, Jazzkammer, Frode Haltli, Jaga Jazzist, Carlos Giffoni, Paal Nilssen-Love, Ikue Mori, Matmos, Zeena Parkins, Otomo Yoshihide, and Fe-mail.

The tightly focused clarity in the duo of Frode Haltli and Trgyve Seim is expressed with an austere beauty worthy of their famed record label, ECM. Frode Haltli is placed firmly among the small and distinguished individualists who have made the case for the accordion as a distinct medium for the investigation of modern consonance and dissonance. But in spite of his ‘new-music’ credentials, Haltli’s sound is one of direct and simple beauty, with a range of colors that contain trace evidence of folk forms and echoes of a Nordic tonality.

The serene and controlled saxophone of Trgyve Seim had its original inspiration in the ‘Nordic Sound’ of ECM stalwart Jan Garbarek. But Seim has distinct warmth and expression that are all his own. His compositions are perfectly balanced; exhibiting a focus on the composite whole of their parts. Seim not only transcends influence; he erases categorical markers of ‘jazz’ and ‘new music’, forging a unique, intimate, and direct type of chamber music.

Links: Maya Ratkje: http://www.ratkje.com/,  Frode Haltli: http://www.haltli.com/,  Trygve Seim: http://www.trygveseim.no/.