Signe Bakke, Kjetil Møster, BIT20 Ensemble, René Wiik, Craig Farr, James Clapperton
Biography Signe Bakke, Kjetil Møster, BIT20 Ensemble, René Wiik, Craig Farr, James Clapperton
Signe Bakke
The pianist Signe Bakke is Associate Professor of Piano and accompaniment at the Grieg Academy where she has been employed since 1992
Bakke gave her debut concert in 1981, and has during her career done a broad range of performances as a soloist, chamber musician, accompanist for singers, pianist in BIT-ensemble and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
Norwegian music has always been an important part of her repertoire, and she has been closely affiliated with Edvard Grieg Museum -Troldhaugen where she has given concerts regularly for more than twenty years. Several times she has been engaged by Bergen International Festival, and she has featured at Oslo Contemporary Music Festival Ultima and many festivals abroad. Her recordings include several CDs with piano music by Grieg (Trold 15 2003, Trold 18 2005), songs by Grieg (Millom Rosor, Lawo 2009) as well as songs by Norwegian composers Haarklou, Schjelderup, Borgstrøm, Elling, Eggen (Shadow songs, Euridice 2007).
Signe Bakke has collaborated with several living composers and her first performances include works by Ketil Hvoslef, Morten Eide Pedersen, and the Japanese composer Karen Tanaka. The recording ”Crystalline” Piano works by Karen Tanaka (2L 2011) received excellent reviews internationally and was acclaimed ”Best CD of the month” by Asahi Newspaper.
Signe Bakke has been collaborating with soprano Liv Elise Nordskog for many years, and in 2013 they released the critically acclaimed CD “Pour Mi” (Lawo) with songs by Olivier Messiaen and a World Premiere Recording of songs by Claire Delbos, Messiaen’s first wife.
James Clapperton
was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1968. After studies in piano at Freiburg Hochschule für Musik with James Avery and at Buffalo University with Yvar Mikhashoff, he gained a Masters degree in Music at Exeter University with Philip Grange and a DPhil in composition at Sussex University with Michael Finnissy.
His concert debut was at the 1985 Edinburgh International Festival and following his first perfromance in Europe at the 1988 Darmstadt FeriEnkurse für Neue Musik he was awarded the Kranichsteiner MusikPreis. Since then he has concertised widely at various festivals including Ars Musica, Brighton, Doanaueschingen MusikTage, Huddersfield, Nuovi Spazi Musicali (Rome), Reykjavik Dark Music Days, Tallinn NYYD, St. Petersburg Soundways and Strasbourg Musica. He has performed with many distinguished musicians including Robert Aitken, Joan La Barbara, Jim Fulkerson, Yvar Mikhashoff and France-Marie Uitti and worked with composers such as John Cage, Michael Finnissy, Brian Ferneyhough, Klaus Huber and Salvatore Sciarrino.
In 1993 James was awarded the PRS award for his violin concerto The Preiching of the Swallow . Recent commissions include The Firmament Serene (Endymion Ensemble), The Testament of James Stewart (a theatre work commissioned by South West Arts) and O besy gostis for cello and piano, for a tour of Scotland given by Rebecca Gulliver and Paul James. His works have been performed at festivals in various countries and broadcaset on BBC Radio 3 and Radio Scotland, as well as in Canada, France, Germany, Holland and Norway.
James is Artistic Director of the Music Factory festival in Norway and was the composer in residence at teh Grigakadamiet Institutt for Musikk from 1998 to 2000.
Morten Eide Pedersen (1958–2014)
was a composition teacher, composer, musicologist, and writer. After completing a master’s degree in musicology at the University of Oslo with a minor in philosophy and sociology, as well as secondary disciplines in mathematics and informatics, he studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. In 1989 he was employed at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, where from 1996 he created and led Norway’s second full-time program in composition. He was also a supervisor for the Norwegian Artistic Research Program.
As a teacher and supervisor, Morten Eide Pedersen had an ability to support and challenge students, while at the same time aiding in the development of their own individual, artistic voices. Both pedagogically and in his own artistic work, he was concerned with tradition’s influence on the creative; of how the past can produce a methodological resource for today’s artists. He was particularly interested in the relationship between text, sound, and language, and composed score-based music, live electronics, computer-assisted music, and more open forms.
As a composer, Morten Eide Pedersen has written music for, or has been commissioned by, among others, Concerts Norway/Music in Nordland, The National Theater – Bergen, BIT20 Ensemble, Music Factory, Tromsø Chamber Orchestra, and the concert series Avgarde. He has collaborated with many performers, among them pianists James Clapperton and Signe Bakke.
Pedersen was also an active writer, communicator, and musicologist. He was editor of the music magazine Ballade for five years and editor of a volume on new music within a book series and research project on Norwegian music history, (1999–2001. Modernism and Diversity) published by Aschehoug publishing house in 2001. He was also a central force in establishing Grieg Academy’s “Wheels within Wheels” (2015–2018), a project where research teams for both early music and composition collaborated to develop new forms of expression.
