Maja S. K. Ratkje: Corona lockdown concert for TUSK Festival 2020

This year’s TUSK festival took place online due to corona. The events of the festival have been streaming twice, once in the evening and secondly in the following morning. There was one performance I listened twice and even tried to record the second stream, which did not work out perfectly because of blackouts in the stream, but I didn’t mind next day, you’ll see why later.

The Corona lockdown concert for TUSK festival 2020 by Norwegian composer/performer Maja S.K. Ratkje is an excellent example of composing through performing. For her Corona piece Ratkje uses her voice only and processes it with live electronics. In this way she produces a musical material of a wide array of sounds which are highly original and worth listening in their own right. In the course of the performance, however, musical form emerges from the progression of these sounds and their interrelations. The result is captivation and you will want to return to this piece several times. If you do, it will reward you with its ever growing beauty.

Of course, I was the first to buy a high quality recording of the piece on the Bandcamp page Ratkje created for it after I had expressed my hope that a recording will be available in the future.