Ole Lützow-Holm
About Ole Lützow-Holm
Ole Lützow-Holm studied composition with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. Springing from a contemporary, central European mode of expression, he has created works for a broad palette of performers and contexts and was early to gain international recognition for his music. Lützow-Holm is a professor of composition at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. In 2012 he completed the artistic research project Towards an Expanded Field of Art Music. There, the topic was to experimentally propose ideas and hands-on procedures advocating alternative frameworks of approaching classical historic as well as contemporary music. The research methodology was devised to facilitate practice-based musical dialogues, inviting an extensive scope of transdisciplinary discourses to participate in the quest for a potentially wider range of performative strategies and conceptual protocols. In recent years, Lützow-Holm has explored operational trajectories to elaborate on transient, short-term musical practices that – inspired by notions of ambiguity and incompleteness – would incorporate elements of improvisation and open form, recurrently in collaboration with other artists.
My artistic practice – a brief overview
Early in my career I was deeply involved in creating a dramatic and technically advanced music with references to a contemporary central European idiom. Mention can be made of L’ieu d’ad orgue for organ and electronics, dianima for two cellos, the solo piano piece ciaroscuro and contour for piccolo and double bass, Sounding for sinfonietta and the quintet Blind Evidence. Expressiveness then gradually shifted from material virtuosity to less defined outlines and pared down patterns. The new quality was essentially distinguished by a kind of flickering, granular surfaces in a kaleidoscopic but restrained palette, as in a triptych comprising Two eyes as darkly bright for a women’s choir, Floral Night Episode for soprano and chamber ensemble and the orchestra miniature Wandering Rocks. The radio play, theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul, was to offer an important turning point, both in terms of form and content. The listener is confronted with an abundant, heterogeneous weave of sound, music and text, the latter extracted from the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This marks the beginning of a hitherto veiled preoccupation related to ideas of recycling and ambivalence. Other works were Twisted Skyline and A Tidal Noise for the Turbulence ensemble, Rhyme and Pairs for marimba solo and Epidemic – a performance for two violins, live electronics and video with Duo Gelland and Lasse Marhaug. The collaborative work was premiered at Stockholm New Music 2006. More recent compositional projects include ARK for a group of unspecified instruments, the ensemble piece J is for Jim – Hommage à James Avery for Ensemble SurPlus and Terra for two violins. Furthermore, as part of the research project Towards an Expanded Field of Art Music, I composed exposition – repris for chamber orchestra, Traces of Oblivion for alto guitar and live electronics (dedicated to Stefan Östersjö) and Winterreise Music for the staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Winterreise at Theatre Galeasen in Stockholm in the winter of 2016. Here, a characteristic feature has been my interest in exploring more transient musical practices that involve improvisation and open form, searching for ways to incorporate notions of ambiguity and incompleteness, frequently inviting other artists as co-creators on equal terms.