They say the sun never sets during the summer nights in some parts of Scandinavia. And while this winter’s Nordic Cool festival can’t bring eternal sunshine to the Potomac, it can give you reason to stay out late listening to music at… the Kennedy Center? Here’s what we think is worth checking out at the arts center’s massive Scandinavian-themed festival, which officially began Tuesday and runs to March 17.
“Cool Club”
The Cool Club series opens Thursday with two sets from Midaircondo (shown above) and Michala Østergaard-Nielsen, an all-female lineup of Swedish electronic musicians/performance artists. Friday’s offering looks a bit more loungey, with twentysomething Finnish guitarist Olli Hirvonen and his quartet, which features drums, upright bass, and vibraphone. (Hint: if you, too, are a twentysomething, check and see if the Kennedy Center still has discounted tickets available through its MyTix promotional program). Faroe Islands folk-fusion jazz makes its KenCen debut on March 1, when Yggdrasil, a collective based off the Norwegian coast, performs sets of catchy, sax-driven tunes.
The festival’s closing weekend brings the 2013 official band of Reykjavik to the Kennedy Center. No, not Sigur Rós. Sorry. But chances are those ethereal popsters (and Björk) are fans of pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs and her trio, which is a bit darker and more avant garde than some of the festival other jazz offerings. Gunnlaugs performs March 8. (Rebecca J. Ritzel)
Classical and New Music
Given the number and quality of contemporary composers coming out of Scandinavia these days, Nordic Cool’s offerings include more new music than most Kennedy Center festivals usually do. For the first time in a decade, the National Symphony will perform a piece by Kaija Saariaho, regarded by many as the foremost living female composer. Feb. 28 through March 2, Saariho’s “Orion” shares an NSO program with a violin concerto by her fellow living composer Magnus Lindberg. In the New Yorker, Alex Ross described Saariaho’s music as “a heaving expanse of intermingled timbres, like a landscape turned molten, or an ocean boiling.” If that doesn’t sound as Scandinavian as Norse mythology, we don’t know what does. (Rebecca J. Ritzel)
Theater
The Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre’s production of Fanny and Alexander will make its U.S. debut at Nordic Cool on March 7. Based on Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman‘s Academy Award-winning 1982 film of the same name, the play (performed in Swedish with English supertitles) highlights themes typical to Bergman’s work: love, death, and the dark side of religiosity. Around the turn of the 19th century, Alexander and his sister Fanny are cast from their fairy-tale upper-class life into a harsh new reality when their father dies on stage and their mother marries a cold, austere bishop. While the characters and the story line are largely realistic, fantasy and magic are also woven into the plot. The narrative follows an arc similar to that of Bergman’s own youth, but the 2009 theatrical rendition brings the fantastic to the fore in a way the cinematic production couldn’t or didn’t. The story moves, literally and physically, as the stage rotates and set workers dart in and out of the background. Active in theater throughout his life, Bergman directed more than 30 plays at the Royal Dramatic Theatre over the course of his career. You’d be hard pressed to find a group better equipped to handle the great director’s work. (Benjamin Preston)
Dance
