Dal Niente/Beyond This Point: Steen-Andersen

Program Notes

Simon Steen-Andersen
Asthma (new arrangement for ensemble, 2025)

Andreas Borregaard, who premiered the piece, put it best: “Humans breathe with their lungs, accordions with their bellows. Breathing is vital to both. Through a video and a live-performed soundtrack, Asthma reveals the gentle beauty and terrifying horror of air currents.”

Simon Steen-Andersen
Run Time Error (2009-2020)

Run Time Error is an ongoing series of video performances filmed at distinctive locations, using only materials found on-site and occasionally incorporating elements or musicians closely connected to the place.

A second layer of performance can be added using a setup with two joysticks, doubling the video, and manipulating time independently for each screen. In this way, Run Time Error evolves into something between a video game and a two-part fugue.

Simon Steen-Andersen
Black Box Music (2012)

Black Box Music is scored for percussion solo, amplified box, fifteen instruments, and live video. The starting point is the classical soloist-conductor but, in this case, the conducting and the solo part are one and the same. The setting is a traditional theater stage with curtains, props, and lighting but, in this case, the stage is also an instrument. Black Box Music can be described as a deconstruction of conducting and puppet theater, as well as an exploration and exploitation of the audio-visual relationships inherent in conducting and staging. The ‘grand show’ is in three movements, beginning with Ouverture and Slow Middle Movement, and culminating in a festive, pompous Self-Imploding Finale.