Århus Sinfonietta strives to perform music that understands its past, plays its present, and develops its future. Århus Sinfonietta was founded in 1990 by a group of musicians from Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and Det Jyske Ensemble in collaboration with composer Hans Abrahamsen and consists of 19 permanent musicians today. Århus Sinfonietta takes its role as a central Danish intermediary of experimental Danish and international music seriously, and commissions a number of new works for their ensemble every year. For the concert at SPOT Festival 2025, the orchestra will present works by Veronika Voetmann and Matthew Grouse.
Veronika Voetmann is a multifaceted musician and composer. Initially playing the classical cello, she soon began to experiment with the cello’s versatility across other genres, such as Nordic folk, improvisation, rock and metal. She has performed and composed in the context of theatre plays and performances, art music concerts and exhibitions. She has also toured nationally and internationally with her own ensembles Stringflip and Cloud Atlas trio, and with various artists such as Myrkur, Marc Facchini and Ættir. The concert will feature the work “Metaxy” for string quartet.
Composer, performer and organiser Matthew Grouse often works at an intersection between music for instruments and voices, electronic sound, text, video, and performance. His music regularly engages with a re-contextualisation of everyday sounds, objects, and automatic, repetitive behaviours to reveal the latent musical in the banal. Matthew Grouse is originally from Yorkshire (UK), but is currently living and working in Copenhagen. The work “A very exciting product launch” for quintet, interactive video, audience participation and electronics presents Ensemble Kontrol 2 from the fictional music technology company ‘Florg’ – a voice-controlled device that seemingly lets the audience control live music with voice commands. However, the illusion is shattered when it is revealed that a hidden performer is actually controlling the changes, exposing the artificiality of the products and raising questions about authenticity, causality, agency, and control.
