This summer has been great, with visits to several festivals with many different projects. First of was a traveling piano festival in northern Norway, hosted by the local MiN - ensemble. The festival first took place in Narvik and then once more in Mosjøen. The idea of the festival was to present the vast spread of solo piano repertoire produced throughout the last 250 years. Luckily, the group also invited us to take part in a chamber music event with their musicians, in my case to play an absolutely marvellous piano quintet by american composer Leo Ornstein.
After this I reconvened with the old Khaos gang to do one last performance of Laurent Chetouanes creation at the Malta Festival in Poznan, Poland. I'm very happy to have been a part of this project and it ended up being a very unique and rewarding experience throughout, with many of the thoughts and ideas still going strong in my mind.
Then after a series of concerts with LightOut at Skillinge Teater in Sweden, it was time for the 10th anniversary edition of my own PODIUM festival in Haugesund, Norway. This was a profound pleasure as alway with great musicians, a great audience and lots of friends everywhere. My enjoyment got an extra boost with record audience numbers and two great first performances of commissioned pieces by Michael Rauter and Ingibjörg Fridriksdottir.
With LightsOut again I then did two concerts at Grachten Festival in Amsterdam with our new, american program. To end the summer I did two festivals in Germany. The first one in Radolfzell included a performance of the 90 minute long Canto Ostinato by Simon Ten Holt, while the second festival took place at Kloster Bebenhausen near Tübingen and consisted of various chamber works. With a great program and fabulous musicians this turned out to be an extremely rewarding experience in every way.