Ultima 2026 Og så været // Cikada & IEMA

EN

And now, the weather

Kulturkirken Jakob, 18 September 2026

Light winds from the northwest, occasional aurora, probability of Mars dust: 40%. What the forecast cannot tell you is what any of this will feel like from the inside.

Tonight's conditions: Cikada, one of Norway's defining contemporary music ensembles, and the emerging musicians of IEMA share an evening where earthly gestures and planetary signals enter the same listening system.

Beneath the Arctic sky, as the northern lights spread across the darkness, Kaija Saariaho found the first ideas for Lichtbogen. The connection between the aurora and the piece remains elusive, but listeners might recognise it in shimmering textures and harmonies that seem to emerge from within the sound itself.

Hanna Hartman's Advanced Weather Information Processing System brings the forecast down to matter. We hear cutlery against terracotta, Velcro and polystyrene, sandpaper, and a bass drum played with a rubber ball. From these materials emerge rain, wind, waves, and chaotic accumulation, like a machine trying to read the weather from inside the weather itself.

The perspective keeps widening. Malin Bång begins with the body: eighteen hands moving as one collective organism. Øyvind Torvund lets a string quartet dream of synthesisers, mechanical birdsong and sounds they were never built to make. Olivia Køppe reaches further still, placing archival voices around the audience so that a century of human fascination with Mars arrives as signals from very far away.

Programme

Malin Bång: the flock of fleeting hands, for ensemble (world premiere)

Hanna Hartman: Advanced Weather Information Processing System, for ensemble (world premiere of ensemble version, co-commissioned by Ultima and SWR)

Break

Olivia Køppe: Blues for a Red Planet, for ensemble, tape and electronics (world premiere, commissioned by Ultima)

Øyvind Torvund: Five Pieces for String Quartet (2024, world premiere)

Kaija Saariaho: Lichtbogen, for ensemble and electronics (1986)