{"id":3629,"date":"2012-01-27T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=3629"},"modified":"2012-01-27T10:37:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T16:37:00","slug":"johann-johannsson-power-of-dynamos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/01\/27\/johann-johannsson-power-of-dynamos\/","title":{"rendered":"J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson – Power of Dynamos"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

\nBy Taylor Burgess<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the DJ Hedspin<\/a> and Big Fun<\/a> craziness which is happening this weekend, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra\u2019s New Music Festival<\/a> is is beginning its forward-thinking series. This year\u2019s festival is featuring Stylus<\/em> favourites Tim Hecker and J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson, among many other established experimental composers.
\nThis isn\u2019t the first that Winnipeg sees of Icelandic composer J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson, 41 years old. Years ago, as part of the N\u00fana Now<\/a> festival, he led an awe-inducing concert\u2014an interlocking of overbearing electronics, shoegaze atmospherics, and a proficient string quartet. His performance on NMF\u2019s closing night, though maintaining those characteristic elements, will be a markedly different honour, as he is premiering a new composition. The piece, A Prayer to the Dynamo<\/em>, comes rather quickly after his full-length album The Miners\u2019 Hymns<\/a> (a film soundtrack, to put it simply) yet the piece to make its world premiere has an entirely different concept behind its aura.
\n\u201cI had a starting image\u2014when I start a piece I always like to have some idea, or some abstract or not-so-abstract image or concept before I start. The thing I was working with in this instance, and which I also take the title, is a chapter in The Education of Henry Adams<\/em>, where Henry Adams describes a mystical experience he has at the World\u2019s Fair in Paris, in the year 1900.\u201d
\nHistorian and novelist Adams attended an exhibit titled the Great Hall of Dynamos<\/em>\u2014large-scale and relatively new power converters, and he was amazed, \u2018had a mystical experience,\u2019 much in the same way that J\u00f3hannsson was struck by Adams\u2019 words.
\n\u201cHe wrote this whole chapter,\u201d continues J\u00f3hannsson, \u201cwhich is very lyrical and beautiful, where he equates his experience in front of these dynamos to the power of religion and the power of the Marian cult. In it, he compares the power of medieval religion to twentieth century mechanical energy, manifested in the form of electrical energy. He found this strong interrelation between electric currents\u2014steam and the electric currents\u2014to the cross with the cathedral.\u201d
\nIt was a concept that the composer could relate to, as he laments we no longer experience trepidation at this still wondrous thing.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t really experience electricity like that. It\u2019s so mundane and taken for granted. That\u2019s what\u2019s so amazing about reading the chapter\u2014this was such a new, strong, mystical, and kind of unexplainable force. Of course, People were aware of the mechanics and the physics behind it, but it was still such an enormous and new source of power with ramifications of possibilities. He gives voice to this awe and fascination that it has.\u201d
\nJ\u00f3hannsson took a poem from the chapter, its title for his composition, and used it as the basis of his piece. Where the free-flowing energy of Adams\u2019 words took him were the modern-day dynamos of his native country land.
\n\u201cIn Iceland, the countryside is littered with power stations which generate power from waterfalls and thermal energy. So I went and recorded the sounds beside these places\u2014the really powerful drones and the sounds of the dynamos in action.\u201d
\nIn addition to his field recordings, to begin and end the piece, J\u00f3hannsson uses a 50 Hz hum, which occurs naturally in electricity, like when electronic gear is connected poorly. J\u00f3hannsson challenged himself to work with the harmonics in the tone.
\nNaturally, it\u2019s his love of all things electric that set him on his current course of being a contemporary composer with his unique blend of influences.
\n\u201cI come from a rock background. I used to play in rock bands, like, wall of noise guitar, and I still do. I am very interested in the extremes of the spectrum\u2014going from softly and quietly to having this whole dynamic range, which is why it\u2019s so amazing to work with a string section. If you amplify it, you can go up to a deafening noise. Like you say, this immersion, I like music that creates an atmosphere, an environment almost, to live in. It\u2019s kind of ritualistic in a way.\u201d
\nHe comments that he doesn\u2019t grandstand while on stage, for the sake of his compositions.
\n\u201cWhen I perform, I don\u2019t talk or address the audience because I don\u2019t want to insert my personality into the experience. I just want to create a moment where you get lost or the saturation of the moment, where [the listener] becomes totally engaged in the constant experience.\u201d
\nJ\u00f3hannsson\u2019s use of dynamics is certainly something to experience firsthand, though they hold up just as well on record\u2014like on The Miners\u2019 Hymns<\/em>, which was influenced by the loss of England\u2019s coal mining industry, and the brass bands comprised of miners that still hold the torn communities together to this day.
\nBut at the behest of J\u00f3hannsson\u2019s compositions, how do classically trained players contribute to his unusual sounds?
\n\u201cWorking with classical musicians, you have to speak their language. You have to basically communicate very clearly what you want to do. If you communicate very clearly on paper, then it works out fine. Of course, it\u2019s preferable to work with players who are enthusiastic about new music and are kind of adventurous. And it\u2019s great when classical musicians are, and can improvise a bit. And these days, a lot of young musicians are\u2014they have a background in electronic music, in rock music and have a much more open approach\u2014they\u2019re flexible and they can approach different environments. It\u2019s amazing when you can have the best of both worlds, when you can have players with amazing technical ability, but also a kind of flexibility and a kind of openness to other ways of working which are not purely academic or classical. I\u2019m lucky to have worked with a lot of players like that. Most of the players on my records have a history like that.\u201d
\nAnd thankfully, with the WSO having run its New Music Festival for 21 years, who better to play out J\u00f3hannsson\u2019s composition?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess Among the DJ Hedspin and Big Fun craziness which is happening this weekend, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra\u2019s New Music Festival is is beginning its forward-thinking series. This year\u2019s festival is featuring Stylus favourites Tim Hecker and J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson, among many other established experimental composers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[661,1045,1104,1110],"class_list":["post-3629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-new-music","tag-ulteriors","tag-winnipeg","tag-winnipeg-symphony-orchestra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}