Røtur / Rødder / Roots
The whole of Tórshavn will be buzzing with new Nordic music when the festival Nordic Music Days is held for the first time ever in the Faroe Islands 14-17 April 2021. In addition to having an extra focus on music with a strong element of staging and sound art in the urban space, the festival also offers workshops and projects with children and young people, a seminar on composition pedagogy in the Nordic countries, communal dining and a film and debate program.
The programme is organized based on the themes:
- Roots
- Meet yourself through the other
- The local and the global
It is the festival’s vision that meetings between the audience and different concert formats will create a strong and present experience for the audience, where a breeding ground is created for the Faroe Islands’ unique musical traditions and the participating artists’ own deep roots to nurture each other.
Concerts and events everywhere
Nordic Music Days 2021 will be created through a large number of collaborations locally. The concerts are therefore realized mainly with Faroese musicians, ensembles and choirs such as Aldubáran, the Faroese Symphony Orchestra, Kingo singers from Tjørnevík and the choir Tarira, but also with other Nordic soloists and ensembles, which thus helps to strengthen networks and collaborations between composers and musicians across the Nordic region.
The audience will i.a. be able to meet a sound installation in the local shopping center, hear carillon in the urban space, experience electronic music in the Cathedral, documentary opera in the Nordic House, a film and debate program with other perspectives on the music, and participate in Faroese chain dancing on the closing night.
The concerts take place at a number of different concert venues in Tórshavn – The Nordic House, Perlan, Reinsaríið, Sirkus, the Cathedral, The National Gallery of the Faroe Islands, and the Music School – partly to match frames, programmes and formats and create different concert experiences, partly to reach as many different audiences as possible.
A very special concert event at the festival will be a series of house concerts – concerts in private homes – in different parts of Tórshavn. Here locals will transform their homes into a concert venue, where the public will be offered an intimate concert experience with new Nordic music, food, and drink. A tradition with roots far back in Faroese culture, where the social life in small and isolated settlements took place in people’s private homes.
Collaborations with schools and educational institutions
Before and during the festival, professional artists from the Nordic countries meet with local children, young people and their teachers about projects with sound and music at primary schools in Tórshavn, at the educational institution Glasír, and the Music School in Tórshavn.
In some projects the students will create music, installations and sound walks in the urban space, in others they will both create and perform their own music. Yet in others, sound and music as an artistic expression and the social value of music are put up for debate based on the themes of the festival.
Film and debate program
During the festival, there will be a film and debate programme at the venue Reinsaríið, which offers a different path into music and puts it in relation to current themes in the society around us. Each evening offers films, conversations and music, where the common thread will be “otherness” – a concept that in its own way is repeated in the festival’s three themes, and which is also part of Nordic Music Days’ core vision: to create space for experiences where participants and the audience meet themselves through the one or the other, to leave traces in the Faroe Islands and sow new seeds.
FACTS
About Nordic Music Days
The festival Nordic Music Days tours annually between the Nordic countries and is organized in turn by the Nordic Composers’ Associations for the Nordic Composers’ Council.
The festival should have been held in September 2020 but has been postponed to 2021 due to the uncertain COVID-19 situation.
Nordic Music Days in the Faroe Islands is organized by Felagið Føroysk Tónaskøld and the Danish Composers’ Association in collaboration with The Nordic House House in the Faroe Islands.
The major part of the programme is curated based on an open call for ideas, where professional artists with connections to the Nordic countries have been able to submit proposals. The selected artists come from the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
The curator team behind Nordic Music Days 2021 consists of the composers Tine Louise Kortermand (DK), Gunnar Karel Másson (IS), Sunleif Rasmussen (FO), and audience curator Anne Boukris (DK)