Ratkje Maja

Crepuscular Hour is an epic, hypnotic one-hour piece for three choirs, three pairs of noise musicians, and church organ, to be performed in a cathedral or similar location with musicians surrounding the audience. The room fills with sound in an intense, but almost meditative hour, as the voices blend with the distortion, the noise sometimes takes over, and the organ eventually takes the music to a new level. The visual design of this concert is a play on the crepuscular rays -- rays of sunlight that appear to radiate through clouds from the point in the sky where the sun is located -- with the light filtered by the obstacles and musicians in the room.

All texts are from the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945. These texts have provided a major re-evaluation of early Christian history. This recording of a performance of the piece includes a DVD of the whole concert, beautifully directed by Kathy Hinde (DVD is PAL format, region-free, with 5.1 and stereo audio). Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (born 1973) is quite a remarkable musician, singer, improviser, and composer.

Her music has been performed worldwide by the Klangforum Wien, the Oslo Sinfonietta, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Fretwork, TM+, the Cikada String Quartet, the Mivos Quartet, the Quatuor Bozzini, the Quatuor Renoir, Crash Ensemble, The Peärls Before Swïne Experience, Torben Snekkestad, Marianne Beate Kielland, SPUNK, Frode Haltli, POING, and many more. Ratkje has been composer in residence at festivals like Other Minds in San Francisco; Trondheim Chamber Music Festival; Nordland Music Festival in Bodø, Norway; Avanti! Summer Festival in Finland; Båstad Chamber Music Festival; and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Ratkje is active as a singer/voice user and electronics performer and engineer, as a soloist and in groups such as SPUNK and BRAK RUG. Other collaborators include Jaap Blonk, Joëlle Léandre, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Stephen O'Malley, Lasse Marhaug, POING, and many more. Ratkje has performed her own music for films, dance, theater, installations, and numerous other projects. Visual art and text are often parts of her work, in installations or staged works. She has made large gallery works with SPUNK and made music for a radio play by Elfriede Jelinek, and in 2003, she played a part in her own opera, also based on texts from the Nag Hammadi library.