Lars Hollmer

Sweden

Hollmer lives in a world all his own, recording in a chicken coop in Sweden (click on the image above to get a better feel for this space), surrounded by mountains of instruments and inhabited by a world of sounds. Utsikter, like all of his recordings, is distinctly different form what has come before. It is graceful, strongly acoustic, often intensely beautiful without ever losing the quirkiness that is at the heart of all of his compositions.

Real Audio Dron "Three accordions, the Zero sette is the leading voice, a Russian accordion on the bass, and an old Neco on the shimmering top notes. If you listen carefully, you can hear a car passing by in the middle of the tune, and some airplanes flying over The Chickenhouse in the fade out." - LH

Real Audio Brev (excerpt) "This is a more orchestrated piece, as you will hear. Michel Berckmans plays bassoon, oboe, English horn. Santiago Jimenez on violin. The rest, accordion, keyboards, piano and strings are played by me" - LH

Both pieces are from the CD Utsikter, available from cdRoots.

Composed by Lars Hollmer
(p)© 2001 Lars Hollmer / Krax
used by permission

Lars also contributed a piece to last year's festival, and you can still hear it in the archive.