(un)Romantic
Live Maria Roggen, Ingfrid Breie Nyhus
“(un)Romantic / Improvising Interpretation” is a duo exploration, creating music for song and piano, with the starting point in late romantic lieder. The project is a 3-year artistic research project at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, 2021–2024. Vocalist Live Maria Roggen and pianist Ingfrid Breie Nyhus experiment with traditioning and interpretation with improvisation as main method. What is romantic and what is unromantic, for us as contemporary composer-performers of today? How are the concepts of style and aesthetics at work in our practice, and across traditions? What may interpretation be? Where does the new begin, and where does the old go? The project addresses macro questions on connections between interpretation-improvisation-composition and performing aesthetics; as well as micro level questions in the duo’s improvising interpretations and interpretational compositions. Working with artistic research as a duo, dialogue and listening are necessary tools. Over time, the duo has become a third “body”, with its own language and aesthetical framework. As we work with improvisation, much of our work happens in the moment, without the possibility of discussing every detail of composition. Part of the time communication must therefore take place without spoken language, in the music itself, in the flow of our joint day-to-day practice and active listening. However, we do discuss before and after playing, to understand each other’s choices, negotiating overall directions, brainstorming methods and discussing taste, expression and form. But in order to sharpen our listening inside the music-making, there is a need to not talk. And even active listening will partly include non-listening. In this presentation, we will show 15–20 min of film from our processes, showing rehearsals, communication and development in the duo over time, and then talk for 10–15 min with focus on how dialogue, listening and togetherness works in our processes.