with Ensemble Scenatet
Mingling a fresh perspective with constancy, Danish composer Christian Winther Christensen has developed a distinct and contemporary sound. His compositions focus on the smallest musical detail and the unsuspected theatrical gesture. Music that moves virtuosically between sound and silence. Influences of sound explorers such as Helmut Lachenmann, György Ligeti or a compatriot like Simon Steen-Andersen are present, but Christensen mainly maps out his own path.
One of the ensembles continuously promoting his work is Scenatet. Founded in 2008, the Danish ensemble presents each concert in a unique way, seeking an unusual, multidisciplinary concert experience. Scenatet here performs the musical theater work Eating a Man in collaboration with director Anna Berit Asp Christensen.
This new multidisciplinary work explores the concept of the unknown/extraterrestrial. As a starting point for the composition, Christian Winther Christensen returns to an older work, the mockumentary “The Documentation About Apu Sarkar“. In this fake documentary, the composer agrees to eat an Indian man after his death. The purpose of this ritual act is to honor the deceased by reviving his spirit when he is consumed. Ten years later, Christensen sheds new compositional light on Apu Sarkar. New questions present themselves and demand musical answers: from the symbolic meaning of cannibalism to the concept of feeling foreign or alien.
Eating a Man is presented by SPOR Festival (2021), November Music (2023) and hcmf// (2024) in the context of the Sounds Now project.
More info and tickets for November Music 2023