This fantastic ensemble turns 20 years this year!
The grounders (the birthday kids) are Sigrid Elisabeth Stang, Marianne Baudouin Lie and Else Bø!
They make Trondheim a better place to live in! They have made so much great music, and they have done so much for melting genres (and musicians) together!
For my sake, composing for Alpaca Ensemble has been a fantastic education, and it still is!
Long Live Alpaca Ensemble!
Here follows a small history of our collaboration through the years:
My first project, as composer and musician, together with the Alpaca Ensemble was in 2002, which resulted in the EP-album “Skråpanel”.
“Skråpanel” is a piece for quartet (Sigrid, Marianne, Else and me), recorded in Banff in Canada in 2004.
Our next project included the amazing drummer Tor Haugerud, for a quintet piece called “Tapet Tapet!” (translated: Wallpaper Wallpaper)
“Tapet Tapet!” was recorded in Rainbow Studios in Oslo in 2006. We also made a video:
“Tapet Unis”
After this came the album “Elevator”.
“Elevator” is a tentett piece, in collaboration with the great lyricist Matt Burt!
This is a live recording from Dokkhuset in Trondheim, at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival in 2008. The musicians includes the quintet above, plus Matt Burt (spoken words), Ole Jørgen Melhus (trombone), Jovan Pavlovic (accordion), Michael Francis Duch (double bass) and Lars Sitter (marimba/percussion/crotales).
In 2009 did a smaller setting, with Sigrid, Marianne, me and the fiddler Nils Økland, go on a small tour in Norway, playing the music of Økland and Hegdal. You can hear some of the music HERE
Another great project together with Alpaca Ensemble is the musical theatre piece “Mekatonia”! A collaboration with the fantastic Cirka Teater and Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, premiered in 2012 (repeated in 2014). (We’ll play a concert version of this the 29th of October at Dokkhuset in Trondheim.)
Watch this:
Mekatonia
We have also a sextet album from 2014 (recorded at Øra Studios), were we mix new music with edited/expanded versions of our earlier music, named “Moving Slow”.
The “Moving Slow” ensemble includes the colorful viola player Bergmund Skaslien, pluss the quintet from “Tapet Tapet!”.
If you want to buy some of Alpaca Ensembles albums, you can find them HERE.
Visit their homepage at www.alpacaensemble.com
Once again:
Long Live Alpaca Ensemble!