Autumn is arriving and OUTPOST is preparing its first light:dark workshop in Bodø! We are so much looking forward to meeting the kids and hearing their ideas and creative thoughts! The children at Bodø kulturskole have already prepared some inspiring drawings which we will use as our guidelines when composing music for our first OUTPOST week in 2021!
We are already well underway with our composing process and are very much excited facing the children’s responses and reactions! Our exhibition concert on October 14th will present both drawings and music and will be a nice closing stage of OUTPOST Bodø 2021.
In addition to writing music inspired by the kids‘ drawings, we will also prepare a piece of music which will inspire the kids to create new drawings and paintings. While playing our piece light:dark, the children are invited to express themselves creatively with the help of whatever crayons and pencils they find suitable. Light: Dark thematizes the Nordic experience of light and darkness and how this reality affects us in our daily lifes.
At our preparation meetings we have discussed how we as individuals, living in Iceland and Norway, experience these strong contrasts between light summer nights and dark winter days, and of course, how we can express our feelings through music. To emphasize the sharp contrast between light and darkness, we have decided to split our quartet in two, making two of us represent the experience of light and the other two the experience of darkness. To us it is important to underline that light and darkness have both positive and negative effects on us, light having the possibility to be both excessively bright, as well as warming and relaxing. Darkness on the other hand might of course be connected to coldness and sadness, but it also opens up for cozy winter evenings in front of the fireplace. These opposites we want to present in Light:Dark in order to challenge the kids to come up with their own reflections and ideas. Our piece will consist of several motives which will return throughout the piece, creating an atmosphere of this unique Nordic experience!
Astri Hoffmann-Tollaas