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Cikada's 30 years anniversary
February 2019
We celebrate Cikada’s 30th anniversary with a number of concerts throughout the year, and it all accumulates with a festive Cikada evening in November. Six concerts with different instrumentations - both our own productions and in collaboration with important actors in Oslo's concert life (Ultima, the concert series Krantz, The Norwegian Storytelling Festival and the National Library) – will display the ensemble and its musicians throughout their whole spectre. We offer both key works from the ensemble's repertoire and new works commissioned for the occasion.
Many of our projects are characterized by the fact that the ensemble manages to have the gaze directed forward and backwards at the same time. Cikada has thus become a traditional carrier within the Norwegian contemporary music field, and is also an important piece in the development of new Norwegian music. Cikada has always wanted to be a spearhead not only for the contemporary music field, but for the entire music field, and help pave the way forward to leave a broader path for the rest of the field.
The year is both a retrospective of the ensemble's activities over the past three decades and an expression of its constant ability to renew.
Besides the birthday activities, Cikada is planning an active year with new productions and international collaborations.
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Cikada to participate in the EU-project DYCE
October 2018
DYCE is a small-scale European project co-funded through the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union during the years 2018-2020.
DYCE has four partners:
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Divertimento Ensemble, project coordinator - Milan, Italy
Cikada - Oslo, Norway
Ensemble U: - Tallin, Estonia
Taller Sonoro - Seville, Spain
The four partners have conceived an international project which enables them to expand their national experience to a European level and bring young European composers to the international stage. Primary goals of the project include active audience engagement, the commission of four new compositions and a new CD.
Visit the project's website
New daily manager of Oslo Sinfonietta and Cikada
December 2017
Foreningen Oslo Sinfonietta og Cikada welcomes Sarah Ludwig-Simkin as it's new daily manager. Ludwig-Simkin has her background in musicology and European ethnology/cultural science from Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). She has previously worked with the German contemporary music ensemble Ensemble Modern and, among others, Telemark Kammerorkester, POING, Kasseler Musiktage and Jazzinstitut Darmstadt. She is of German-English origin and has lived in Norway for the last years.
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Ludwig-Simkin will take up the post on 1 January 2018, succeeding Maria Fonneløp, who is moving on to a position at the Munch Museum.
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Cikada quartet nominated to critics' award
September 2017
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The Norwegian Critics' Association, Kritikerlaget, has nominated Cikada Quartet to the critics' music award for their performance on 12 September 2016 at the Ultima Festival. The announcement of the winner will take place 28 September in Oslo.
Read more about the award here (information in Norwegian only).
Cikada Performs Feldman
September 2016
'I can't go on. I'll go on.' Samuel Beckett's famous closing line from The Unnameable perfectly describes the mood from the last work completed by American composer Morton Feldman. Feldman's delicate, sparse methods eventually transcended his early indeterminate work with the 1950s 'New York School' of John Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff.
The 75-minute Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello is a hymn to eternity, with its resignment to fate and luminous melancholy. Premiered two months before the composer's death in 1987, it's a beautifully austere swansong full of beguiling dissonance and the sense of a tide forever lapping at the shore.
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Come experience this landmark work of postwar American music at Ultima Oslo Contemporay Music Festival, Monday September 12th.
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With: Kenneth Karlsson - Piano
Odd Hannisdal - Violin
Bendik Foss - Viola
Torun Stavseng - Cello