BIO
MEDIA
The composer and sound artist Niels Roensholdt (b. 1978) has studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus (DK) with Karl Aage Rasmussen and Bent Sørensen and in Berlin with Helmut Oehring. His works include experimental operas, installations and chamber music.
Roensholdt has received commissions from a. o. Akademie der Künste (D), Sound Around Biennale, Edition Wilhelm Hansen, TRANSIT Festival (B) and The Danish National Opera. He was featured composer on the festivals Music Harvest 07 (DK), Happy Days 05 (N), Transit 08 (B) and Spor 09 (DK) and his music has been performed by a. o. Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin (D), Ensemble Intégrales (D), NING (N), BIT20 (N), Figura (DK), Reflexion K (D), Champ d’Action (B) and Ensemble Offspring (Au).
Niels Roensholdt has received scolarships from a.o. Danish Arts Foundation and Akademie der Künste. In 2009 he was given a three-year working grant from the Danish State.
CONTACT
THE DEMON OF INTIMACY
Portrait article by Jens Voigt-Lund
demonofintimacy.rtf
SWR FEATURE
From a Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk feature by Torsten Möller about Juliana Hodkinson, Simon Steen-Andersen & Niels Roensholdt (german)
CHIFFREN
Audio portrait from Festival Hörbuch by Gisela Nauck (german)
DR FEATURE
Danish National Radio portrait including live recordings from 2007 (danish)
THE NEW COMPOSERS
Danish Arts Agency article on the Danish composer generation aged 30 +/-
QUOTES
With an insistence on aesthetic and technical precision, Rønsholdt has been whittling consistently and mercilessly for many years upon the genres of instrumental music, chamber opera and installation, often in co-operation with the media artist Signe Klejs. With works such as 'Triumph' (2007) and 'Honeymoon' (2009), Rønsholdt and Klejs have created new electronic music formats in which Rønsholdt's musical stringency has been maintained in a media platform that presents and develops the thematic work on all levels. Rønsholdt's music is characterised by an extreme tenderness that entices the listener to enter difficult universes, where the aesthetics and composition are so powerful that you can feel the door slam shut behind you.
- Danish Arts Foundation
In Grusomhetens Teater, the chamber opera 'Inside your mouth, sucking the sun' for soprano, baritone, clarinet and trombone was performed, written by the young and promising Danish composer Niels Rønsholdt. Based on the letters from Napoleon Bonaparte to his empress Josephine de Beauharnais, Rønsholdt presented a convincing work in all its concentrated sparingness. Dominated by an anxious and only partly understandable voice treatment - excellently performed partly sung, partly recited in German by the soprano Tora Augestad - the piece expressed the love between Napoleon and Josephine.
- MusikTexte (D)
Niels Rønsholdt has written some very peculiar pieces and his opera-like stage piece 'Inside your mouth, sucking the sun' is doubtlessly a temporary chief work.
- Parergon (N)
I see 'Inside your mouth, sucking the sun' as an ambitious endeavour to reinvent or evaluate the traditional opera drama.
- Danish Music Review
Consciously, the words are instrumentalized or vocalized beyond understandability. The soft, sighing and mostly very high singing is without great dramatic movement, but possesses an overall aching beauty and simplicity (...) It is in some way unexpected to hear the feelings between two (historical) characters described so quietly and undramatic in a time where modern opera seems to be dominated by great feelings, problems and aggressions.
- The Jutland Post
The composer Niels Rønsholdt has not yet reached 30 years and still he has written several succesfull and deeply original pieces of music theatre.
This time with "TRIUMPH", created together with the video designer Signe Klejs. Thirty extremely simple minutes about violence, pain and satisfaction; a kind of ultra modern, electrified micro-opera about SM.
- The Jutland Post
In spite of his young age, Niels Rønsholdt is extraordinarily original, unconventional and consistent in his musical thinking.
- Prof. Karl Aage Rasmussen, DJM
We are doubtlessly dealing with a radical composer. The radicality is almost of the calibre of Lachenmann and Feldman, and 'Inside your mouth, sucking the sun' was an important corrective to Danish mainstream music theatre.
- Danish Music Review
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High resolution portraits by Uffe Paulsen:
info[at]nielsroensholdt.dk
+4523604179