‘Confessions’ is a work by the Faroese songwrtiter Teitur and the American composer Nico Muhly. Together they have created 14-track opus with lyrics inspired by or lifted from videos and user comments on YouTube.
The project began in 2008 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where Nico Muhly was already composer-in-residence at the city’s Muziekgebouw and had fallen in love with both the house baroque orchestra and the challenge of making modern compositions for a historically traditional orchestra, who normally work with very different rhythms. First Muhly and Teitur made four tracks together – then ten more in 2009 so there were enough for a concert. In October last year ‘Confessions’ was then released through the record label Nonesuch simultaneously with a performance in New York.
At SPOT ‘Confessions’ will be performed with a baroque orchestra consisting of four musicians from Aarhus Symphony Orchestra.
Teitur is a Faroese singer and songwriter, who got his international breakthrough with the album ‘Poetry & Airplanes’. He has won several DMA Awards as both a singer and a songwriter. In the past he has worked with – and written songs for – a long list of international stars, such as Seal, Corinne Bailey Ray, etc.
Nico Muhly is an American modern composer, who has been described by The Guardian as “one of the most celebrated and sought-after classical composers of the last decade”. He is the youngest composer ever to compose works for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and he has numerous operas, chamber pieces and symphonic works to his name.
Aarhus Symphony Orchestra contributes a “for-the-occasion baroque ensemble”, which will use the tuning for the strings that was the standard in the Baroque Era, more specifically 415 Hz as opposed to today’s standard of 442 Hz. The slightly deeper tuning automatically gives a richer, more open and warmer tone. In addition to strings, the other instruments will be a recorder, a cembalo, and a lute / theorbo.
The concert is the result of the joint efforts of Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and SPOT. It is the third year in a row that the two parties collaborate on projects for SPOT Festival. Last year it was “Beinta” composed by Anna Katrin Øssursdóttir Egilstrøð and Allan Gravgaard Madsen, which was performed at SPOT with the complete symphony orchestra.