Maja Ratkje: Faster than sound
Composer and performer Maja Ratkje featured at Wire Magazine-curated multi-tiered performance in the UK.
Curated by The Wire magazine, a multi-tiered performance ‘Faster Than Sound’ at Aldeburgh Music in Snape, Suffolk brings together Norwegian vocalist, electronic improviser and composer, Maja Ratkje, independent artist Kathy Hinde, and New York-based artist and composer, Marina Rosenfeld.
They generate parallel projects that will draw on the same pool of amateur performers and a number of UK-based artists working in both digital audio and video. The projects will come together in a multi-tiered performance that will occupy various spaces over the Snape Maltings complex, and will highlight all the elements that have been developed during the week-long residency.
Norwegian-born Maja Ratkje has performed all over the world with her fascinating sound. Blurring the boundaries between sound and music, with the only distinction being the human ear as audience and the conscious creation and placement of sounds, Maja Ratkje challenges the listener in every possible way.
Ratkje studied composition at the Norwegian State Academy of Music with professors Olav Anton Thommessen, Asbjørn Schaathun, Lasse Thoresen among others. She has also had lessons with Gerald Bennett, Louis Andriessen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Joji Yuasa, Ivar Frounberg, Klas Torstensson, Klaus Huber, Richard Barrett, Kaija Saariaho and more. She is a singer/vocalist, keyboard, violin and theremin player (an electronic musical instrument where two metal antennas which sense the position of the player's hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other, makes sound without actual physical contact from the player). She is well known for her vocal talent, ranging from soft, ethereal sounds to harsh, frantic screams.
Maja Ratkje’s 2002 Rune Grammofon album Voice has earned her and compatriots Jazzkammer the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the Digital Musics category. With 11 albums under her belt, both solo and collaborative works, this Norwegian continues the listener to meet head-on all preconceived notions of music.
Maja Ratkje's MySpace site
Maja Ratkje's Last.fm site
Maja Ratkje on Spotify
