Unique collaboration between Swedish composer Hans Ek and Elefantöra

‍Beats, Sounds and Strings – a three-dimensional musical journey consisting of a brand-new piece by conductor and composer Hans Ek – together with ShareMusic & Performing Arts’ electronic ensemble Elefantöra, contemporary music specialists Gageego! and Helsingborg´s Symphony Orchestra. In this collaboration, Hans Ek has created a new piece built on different layers created by Elefantöra. The basis is a library of samples that Elefantöra in their turn created in collaboration with Gageego!. The vision of an inclusive and equal world is at the core of the music. We meet in the borderland between electronica and art music – in the crossroads where all things beautiful are born. In addition to the new piece, the concert will also include music by artists such as Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and Claude Vivier, arranged by Hans Ek.  

–That feeling you can get when you watch a movie without knowing what it is – you just get into something and get swept away by it. You get on the ride and trust it somehow, and just experience it. I always hope for that kind of listening with the audience. And here, there are good preconditions for that.
Hans Ek

About Elefantöra

Elefantöra – the ensemble that juxtaposes the order in the musical spaces. With their strong musicality and sensitivity, they are disrespectfully moving through the cracks in the thin wall between the analogue and the digitized. Expect contrasts and cross-over meetings when Elefantöra challenges, stretches and blows up prevailing boxes for what music can be, with a sound image that makes you listen.

The ensemble has collaborated with string orchestra Musica Vitae and the Norrland Opera’s symphony orchestra in artistic labs and participated in residencies. At the Change Music Festival in 2021, they performed Jesper Nordin’s Retrospective III together with solo violinist Malin Broman and a string orchestra. Conductor was Simon Crawford-Phillips. The ensemble has also collaborated with composers such as Karen Power, Rosanna Gunnarson, Magnus Larsson, Hugo Boothby and Anna Gustavsson.

The ensemble mainly works with various digital music tools and belong to a growing post-digital genre that explores the musical expression through instrumentation as well as through working methods and notation. The listening always decides how the musical space shifts in size and density, it alters by Elefantöra’s personal sound design.

The ensemble was formed in autumn 2017 by ShareMusic & Performing Arts in connection to a development project about digitalization. Today, Elefantöra consists of musicians Joel Mansour, Ewe Larsson, Sayam Chortip, and sound designers Louisa Danielsson and Gusten Aldenklint.  

Connection to the New European Bauhaus initiative

ShareMusic & Performing Arts are proud partners of The New European Bauhaus (NEB), which is a creative and interdisciplinary initiative where The European Green Deal is connected to people’s habitats and experiences. ShareMusic views the partnership as a possibility to also work long-term and sustainably with issues concerning physical accessibility and innovative scenic spaces of all kinds.  

This concert with Elefantöra at Tryckeriet, an old printing house in Helsingborg (south of Sweden), is completely in line with the initiative as the choice of venue is based on physical accessibility and innovation rather than conventional spaces for music. To bring together Elefantöra, Gageego! and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in this setting, a constellation of completely different traditions, will be a common exploration of the art and the space. At the same time, it offers opportunities to make new role models visible and to meet new audiences. Under the lead of composer Hans Ek, an artistic meeting is created that lacks comparison in its multidimensional and interdisciplinary scope.

–  Something I like with this project, is that the whole thinking around sound technology and the electronic is there from the start as a self-evident part of the artistic.
Hans Ek

Interview with Hans Ek (Swedish).