I had really hoped to see Evan Parker perform live with Ingar Zach and Stian Westerhus at the Sørlandet Art Center Saturday afternoon, but we got three 20 min long solos, Parker first, then Zach and finally Westerhus. When Stian Westerhus entered, the dominance of the quiet improv was over for good at this year´s festival. He went rock and noise from the word go, but quieted down with some bow playing on the guitartowards the end, and I observed that even Evan Parker pulled his fingers out of his ears. Three fine solos, but a pretty wild mix!
On the main stage at Agder Theater Arve Henriksen´s album "Cartography" was performed, with Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Ingar Zach, Eivind Aarset, Anna Maria Friman, David Sylvian and Arve Henriksen. This is still an absolute beautiful piece of music, but it was perhaps a little bit more dark now, adding some more excitement to the music.
The great Susanne Sundfør owned the stage, with a strong performance of her own songs, almost disappearing in smoke. I was afraid we would have a Spinal Tap moment there, when she had to cough, but she was OK!
The professors Helge Sten and John Paul Jones led the first of Saturday´s seminars at the Agder University, demonstrating the
KYMA system. This is a bit too much technology for me (some graphic interface stuff for musicians), but with good teachers,and some playing to demonstrate, we had a nice hour at school.
Later in the evening they played the final concert of the festival, starting off with what looked like an iPad performance, but ended up in a massive electronica show. Cool!
Oh yes, there were live remixes too. My favorites of the evening happened to be Nils Petter Molvær and Guy Sigsworth making a hysteric disco mix out of Susanne Sundfør and Sacred Harp´s concerts, and Molvær at it again, with Jan Bang, Marilyn Mazur, Eivind Aarset and Erik Honoré, remixing Minibus Pimps.
