Name: River Mouth Echoes by Maja S. K. Ratkje
Duration: 19 min 59 s
Description: Four viola da gambas performing this piece. Made by Ratkje, played by Fretwork. On a portrait CD with Ratkje's work, with the same title. Buy it from Tzadik!

Wow! Amazing piece Maja - my heart is soaring after listening to this!

I feel as though I'm listening to this in the same way, with the same ears and excitement, as I would a Lachenmann work, yet... Yet, I don't think I'm hearing any techniques that would not have been familiar to, say, Bartok. What a brilliant piece.


I am just now discovering Maja S. K. Ratkje. Where have I been for the last few years?!  In Dusted Magazine, Dan Ruccia wrote: "River Mouth Echoes stands out as the central work of the record..."

(I can't imagine this piece being anything other than central on any CD)

In that same review, Ruccia also wrote: "...it is clear that Ratkje operates within a new creative space"

(oh, how much I agree with that)

Beautiful and mesmerising, I wish this moment would never end.

emur (2020)

for singer, saxophone, trumpet, violoncello, percussion and sampler.

performed by Fredrik Storsveen, Annie Lundgreen, Kristina Fransson, Andrine Erdal and Jonas Evenstad.

Peeking And Humming (2021)

Hva er lyden av Kirkenes, mon tro? Organisten i Kirkenes Kirke besvarer spørsmålet ved å spille på orgelet. Lydkunstner Alexander Rishaug har en praksis der han arkiverer lyden av et landskap i endring. Vi blir med på en impulsiv lydvandring til en brygge i Kirkenes der han gjorde lydopptak fire år tilbake. Er den samme lyden fortsatt der? I samtale med Katarina Barruk og Maja S. K. Ratkje blir vi bedre kjent med Avant Joik-prosjektet, og deres tilnærming til å lage musikk. Vi drøfter lydens forankring i minner, emosjoner og landskap, og Maja og Katarina reflekterer omkring det som skjer mellom dem når de spiller sammen og hvordan dette speiles i lyduttrykket de skaper.

// 

What is the sound of Kirkenes, we wonder? The organist in Kirkenes Kirke answers the question by playing the organ. Sound artist Alexander Rishaug has an artistic practice where he archives the sound of a changing landscape. We join an impulsive sound walk to a pier in Kirkenes where he made sound recordings four years ago. Is the same sound still there? In conversation with Katarina Barruk and Maja S. K. Ratkje, we become better acquainted with the Avant Joik project, and their approach to making music. We discuss the anchoring of sound in memories, emotions and landscapes, Maja and Katarina reflect on what happen between the two of them when they play together and how this is shaping the sound expression they create.

Lyttestasjon9000 EP4 - What is the sound of the circumpolar landscape?

I Nasadyia Sukta (Hymn of Creation)

II.  "...He verily knows or perchance even He knows not."

In Memoriam (2022)

What are the words to us?
Maja S. K. Ratkje

ab 26. November in der Box
https://www.luzernertheater.ch/whatarethewordstous

Mit:
Marcela Rahal
Maja S. K. Ratkje
William Green
Luzerner Sinfonieorchester

Regie: Sophiemarie Won
Bühne und Kostüme: Maude von Giese
Licht: Marc Hostettler
Musikalische Einstudierung: William Green
Dramaturgie: Talisa Walser

Audioeinführung «What are the words to us?»

Hardingfelespiller og komponist Erlend Apneseth omtales som en brogygger inn i tradisjonen. Her møter musikkjournalist Audun Vinger ham for Ballade radio mellom to konserter på Riksscenen i Oslo – mens Apneseth er utvalgt «Husvarm-artist» der, og like før bestillingsverket «Herifrå» urframføres under Oslo World.

Erlend Apneseth Intervjues Av Audun Vinger / Ballade radio oktober 2023

Four viola da gambas performing this piece. Made by Ratkje, played by Fretwork. On a portrait CD with Ratkje's work, with the same title. Buy it from Tzadik!


River Mouth Echoes

Bantam Knock performed in Sweden during the UNM-festival. 

Bantam Knock (UNM Malmø 2014)

HYMNUS MASCHINE (2015), for cello octet, commissioned by 
Cellolyd Festival in Lofoten. First performance in the concert  Nye lyder (New Sounds) 8.8-2015 in Lofoten.

HYMNUS MASCHINE

Track written for Collectief Walden's performance "Het Verband van Alles met Alles".

Photo by Moon Saris

Pass The HEAT (feat. Dominic Kraemer, Collectief Walden and Boy On The Moon)

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, composer and performer (born Dec. 29th 1973 in Trondheim, Norway), finished composition studies at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo in 2000. Her music is performed worldwide by performers such as Klangforum Wien, Oslo Sinfonietta, The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Fretwork, TM+, Cikada and Vertavo string quartets, Quatuor Renoir, Ticom, crashEnsemble, Pearls for Swine Experience, Torben Snekkestad, Marianne Beate Kielland, SPUNK, Frode Haltli, POING and many more. Portrait concerts with her music has been heard in Toronto and Vienna, she has been composer in residence at festivals like Other Minds, San Francisco, Nordland Music Festival, Bodø, and the Avanti! summer festival.

Ratkje has received awards such as the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris for composers below 30 years of age, the Norwegian Edvard prize (work of the year) twice, second prize at the Russolo Foundation, and in 2001 she was the first composer ever to receive the Norwegian Arne Nordheim prize. Her solo album «Voice», made in collaboration with Jazzkammer, got a Distinction Award at Prix Ars Electronica in 2003.

Ratkje is active as a singer/voice user and electronics player as well as studio engineer, as a soloist or in groups such as SPUNK or Agrare. Other collaborations are with Jaap Blonk, Joëlle Léandre, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Stephen O’Malley, Stian Westerhus, Lasse Marhaug, POING and the metal band Trinacria. Ratkje has performed her own music for films, dance and theatre, installations, and numerous other projects. In 2003, she played a leading part in her own opera, based on the texts from the Nag Hammadi Library. In 2005 she performed the voice solo part of her first big work for orchestra, commissioned by Radio France. She has also been soloist with Klangforum Wien and Oslo Sinfonietta.

Her scores are found at the Norwegian Music Information Centre and her records are released on Tzadik, Rune Grammofon, ECM, Kontrans, Asphodel, Important Records and others.

River Mouth Echoes

Maja S. K. Ratkje

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