Michael Beek joins the inaugural Aria Borealis Bodø, a biennial Early Music festival and singing competition just beyond the Arctic Circle
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
Nordland is sparsely populated, but Bodø, the Norwegian county’s largest town, is something of a mini metropolis. Visitors flock to this corner of the Arctic for its jaw-dropping scenery – it would be hard to forget the mountainous landscapes descending to crystal waters, jagged coastlines and the sight of native sea eagles – but increasingly it is culture that has become one of Bodø’s biggest draws.
Since it opened in 2014, the Stormen Kulturhus has swiftly become the beating heart of the town’s cultural life and it is the perfect home for a music festival-with-ambitions like Aria Borealis Bodø. We were invited for the final few days of events, which began the week before, and I caught up with Mari Giske from Nordic Baroque Scene, an organisation made up of some of Scandinavia’s top Baroque ensembles and the visionaries behind the nine days of events. Giske was evidently buzzing from the experience, and very satisfied with the results. ‘It is such a success and actually what I dreamed it would be,’ she tells me. ‘It has been an experiment, but really enjoyable for all the participants – the singers in the competition, the musicians and also the people who came to the course sessions, not to mention the orchestra for the 11-20 year-olds.’
Youth music-making is an important aspect of this festival, which features the final rounds of a competition for young Early Music singers. The ethos of everything that happens here is one of collaboration and encouragement, as Giske shares. ‘We wanted to find and encourage the best singers, but at the same time we didn’t want to make a sport out of it; it’s the music that’s at the centre. So collaboration was important to us and the feeling that even though it was a competition, the main focus should be to encourage each other and to know that when you make music together there’s no such thing as “if you fail, I succeed”: we either fail or succeed together.’
The jury of five, chaired by Stormen’s CEO Rasmus Adrian and including British soprano Emma Kirkby, had the challenge of whittling down 127 initial entrants to 30 candidates. From those earlier digital rounds, they selected eight young singers from around the world, who came
