Anders Monrad: The Mærsk Opera Ekkozone & Jesper Nordin

• Anders Monrad (b. 1981): The Mærsk Opera, Prologue:
• 1 The Mærsk Opera, Prologue: Hos en Stenhugger i hans værksted 07:56
• The Mærsk Opera, Act I:
• 2 The Mærsk Opera, Act I: Hvor Arkitekten mister stemmen 20:20
• The Mærsk Opera, Act II:
• 3 The Mærsk Opera, Act II: Hvor Arkitekten mister stemmen 13:45
• The Mærsk Opera, Act III:
• 4 The Mærsk Opera, Act III: Hvor Folket siger tak 15:19
• The Mærsk Opera, Epilogue:
• 5 The Mærsk Opera, Epilogue: Hos en Stenhugger i hans værksted 03:57
• Total Runtime 01:01:17

Info for Anders Monrad: The Mærsk Opera

The Maersk Opera is an opera in three acts for 26 voices, choir, and orchestra about the building of the Copenhagen Opera House, donated to the city of Copenhagen as a “people’s gift,” financed solely by Denmark’s richest man, the late Maersk McKinney-Moller. The opera tells the story of the power relation between a single privileged individual, his company and the surrounding society, through the much debated building of the Opera House. The Maersk Opera is licensed for free non-commercial use and the score was donated to the Royal Danish Opera and the Copenhaben Opera House for free in 2012. The artwork for this album was made by the art group SUPERFLEX, who exhibits their works in museums all over the world.

Christian Westergaard, piano
Rikke Sandberg, piano
Tanja Zapolski, piano, Hammond organ
Manuel Esperilla, synth
Anders Monrad, synth overdubbing
Rune Højmark, pedal steel guitar
Nina Bols Lundgren, singer
Sophie Thing-Simonsen, singer
Rebecca Forsberg, singer
Emil Lykke, singer
Adam Riis, singer
Simon Duus, singer
Morten Staugaard, singer
Bo Nandfred, singer
Morten Lassenius Kramp, singer
Superflex
Jesper Nordin, conductor

Jesper Nordin
(born in 1971 in Stockholm) is a leading Swedish composer, and one who has garnered considerable international acclaim in recent years. His music, with its powerful emotional impact and traces of traditional Swedish folk music, rock music and improvised music, is broadcast and performed throughout the world. His music is performed by conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen, Daniel Harding and Kent Nagano. His orchestral pieces have been played and/or commissioned by such orchestras as the Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Swedish and Finnish radio orchestras. He is also included in the repertoires of several of the world’s foremost contemporary music ensembles, amongst them Ensemble Itineraire, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. He was composer-in-residence for Swedish Radio’s serious music station (P2) between 2004 and 2006. Jesper Nordin has also had huge success with his iOS app Gestrument that is based on his own composition technique. It is used worldwide to create music in genres ranging from Electronica and Techno to Jazz Impro and Contemporary Classical music.

His music has been performed at numerous festivals, including Manifeste, Musica Strasbourg, ISCM, Gaudeamus, Musiques en Scène, Ultima, Tokyo Summer Music Festival, Archipel and many others. In 2010 he received the foremost Swedish Composition Prize Christ Johnson Award for being “a sound magician, who explores and expands the acoustic space with originality and an uncompromising curiosity” (Royal Swedish Academy of Music). He has also been awarded the Lesser Christ Johnson Prize and received a recommendation at UNESCO’s Rostrum as well as several international prizes for the piece “calm like a bomb”.

Nordin studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm with Pär Lindgren, Bent Sørensen and William Brunson, before taking further studies at IRCAM with Philippe Leroux and others. He subsequently was invited to be a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, where he studied with Brian Ferneyhough and worked in the CCRMA studio. His music is published by Edition Peters, Frankfurt.

Booklet for Anders Monrad: The Mærsk Opera