Nidaros

MOTHER – a word that evokes associations – memories – emotions. Which mother do you think of? A loving mother with a newborn baby in her arms. Intimacy. A despairing mother in deep grief over a lost life. Emptiness. Through words and music our lives are woven together with Mary's life and perhaps we sense that a mother's pain and sorrow, a mother's strength and endurance, a mother's warmth and love are the same now as they were two thousand years ago.

Less than half a year since the release of The Trondheim Concert, my new solo album will be released on March 31st.

Magne H. Draagen was born in 1974 and received his first organ lessons from Edvin Eriksen and Leidulv Grimsmo in Nordmore. He studied organ at the Norwegian Academy of Music, from which he received a Bachelor's in Church Music in 1997 and later a soloist diploma as organist. Draagen is former organist and choirmaster of Gamlebyen Church, Old Aker Church, and Holy Trinity Church in Oslo. From 20022012 he served as organist and choirmaster at Oslo Cathedral and, among other things, as artistic director of Oslo Cathedral Boys Choir.

Mons Leidvin Takle’s vigorous opener—everything you would expect from a work called Yes!—sets the mood for the whole of an infectiously upbeat recital.

Mons Leidvin Takle’s vigorous opener—everything you would expect from a work called ‘Yes!’—sets the mood for the whole of an infectiously upbeat recital.

On this newest endeavour, the Vox Clamantis choir, under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, turns its attention towards Norwegian composer Henrik Ødegaard with a fine-drawn programme of liturgical choral music. In a subtle sleight of hand, Ødegaard’s compositions interweave Gregorian chant with Norwegian folk song. The composer employs Gregorian and paschal hymns as source material, from which he then draws his own polyphonic layers and extensions. The main work here is the eight-part Meditations over St. Mary Magdalene’s Feast in Nidaros, based on antiphons found in a 13th-century manuscript from medieval Scandinavia. Ødegaard’s compositional process transfigures these antiphons, sensitively brought to light by Vox Clamantis. On past ECM recordings, the choir has addressed works of Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür and most recently Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek – an acclaimed recording, which BBC described as “magic of another sphere”. The new album was recorded at the St. Nicholas Dome in Haapsalu, Estonia in March 2021.

Bob Chilcott is one of Britain’s most popular and respected composers and his choral music is performed worldwide. He has always embraced a broad stylistic palette and his writing for voice combined with jazz instrumentation gives these works a sense of vitality and energy. Performed by leading jazz soloists and Commotio, the distinguished promoters of contemporary repertoire, this sequence of brilliant villanelles, folk song arrangements and witty settings reveals once again the breadth of Chilcott’s musical imagination.