KARIN HELLQVIST
DUO HELLQVIST/AMARAL
KARIN HELLQVIST, VIOLIN
HELOISA AMARAL, PIANO
Violinist Karin Hellqvist and pianist Heloisa Amaral met in 2009 while working in Oslo with Ensemble neoN. Two years later, they set off exploring Iannis Xenakis’ Dikthas (or “dual”) for violin and piano. Featuring two contrasting voices held together through intense energy, the piece was to determine the spirit of Duo Hellqvist/Amaral, which, shortly after, made their debut concert at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.
Fearless in their exploration of the newest music, the duo has since played an outstanding role in the field of experimental music. Alongside the performance of new commissions by composers Øyvind Torvund, Marina Rosenfeld, Dror Feiler, Natasha Barrett, Mauricio Pauly, Santiago Diez-Fischer et al. in Norway, Sweden, USA, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Denmark, Korea and Colombia, the duo has given workshops and seminars in major universities in Latin America, USA, Argentina and Korea focusing on the interpretation, notation and technical realization of experimental repertoire as well as on the dialogue between performer and composer. Residencies and short term stays at Harvard University (USA), conDIT (ARG), House Concert (KO) and Villa Romana (IT) have also contributed to the development of the duo and finally, to exciting musical encounters that led to the formation of the neoN Trio with Yumi Murakami (flute) in 2012, the HAHB QUARTET with Joshua Hyde (sax) and Noam Bierstone (percussion) and HELLQVIST/AMARAL/CHOI with Sori Choi (traditional Korean percussion) in 2015.
Recently, the duo has initiated a cross diciplinary collective project, Impossible Situations/Extended Performers, in which a group of musicians, composers, a set designer, a video artist and a sound engineer work closely together to create, out of the intimacy of the chamber music situation, utopian spaces that expand instrumental, performative, mediatic and scenic boundaries as well as the very role of the performers. Another recent project bringing artists from different background together is Disobediences in Sound, an international project aiming to explore the political force and power to comment of sound and noise through collaborations with strong voices in the field of improvisation, notated music, peformance and video art.
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PHOTO: Jacob Blickenstaff, NYC Times