Some artists you just take for granted. They are there, good, better or best

One artist that has risen for my inner ear (and outer) is a lady from Canada (with norwegian roots), Joni Mitchell. Her "Both Sides Now" album with beautiful orchestration and arrangements by Vince Mendoza has filled my little music room for quite some time now. When Joni sings "A Case Of You", I believe what she says. She has conveyed her life in music and written so painfully beautiful about .... Canada?

And then, "Music For The Silence Minority" belongs to the infinite sea of tranquillity, like so much other music does. Like all things you cherish and love, there is an empty space in your soul after they are gone. I am presently totally reset, and don't have many oppinions. I mostly sit and improvise, waiting for some chords or lines to show me a way. In august I will start writing for four guitars, bass and drums. It will be neither "For Brothers" nor "For Others". Maybe "For Mothers"

After having worked with the music for this play (which every adult should look at as for adults), I have reflected on how difficult this music is. Most people would say "easy childish music". But the fact is that everything that shall be done professionally with the heart requires about 167%. My oppinion is that everything requires max guts. There is much snobbishness among socalled "topp musicians". They should sit down in the orchestra pit for a while and think ensamble. In case you on the spotcannot accompany "happy birthday" in all keys to satisfaction, you have not payed attention at school.

I appreciated my project at Romerike College Of Further Education 9. january 2004 a lot. To meet and work with musicians in their novice years is a big challenge. Not least in the border district between crushing dreams and encurraging those with talent. I always become wistful after my concerts, in many ways meeting myself with very good musical qualities and those sides of my musical carreer that clearly tells me what I shall drive home and work harder with.

Lately I have listened a great deal to Maria Callas and Eva Cassidy, two appearently different artists. But they had in my oppinion much in common both in musical expression and in destiny. We needes them both. They both went far beyond what was considered common, and they both paid a prize for shielding something that should be cheered. There is only one of each of us.

I have now finished writing Wood-Winds and Strings for a woodwind and guitar. As I chose to use an earth-flavoured sound on this piece, I hope it will sound good with alto flute, clarinet, guitar, englishhorn, horn and bassoon. Right now I'm looking forward to some time solely dedicated guitar playing.

When I relize that a lot of people place a lot of confidence in me, such as letting me play at the Munch museum in close proximity to the spirits of Edvard Munch and Gustav Vigeland, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a familiar feeling. It's a feeling composed of both creative anxiety and heavy expectation, very much like the feeling I had when playing at my very first gig in Folkets Hus in Tromsø, Norway.

At that time, I played together with my uncle and accordeonist Harald Hemingsen, at a wedding. This first experience with all the magic and surprise that music as an artform has to offer, has ever since become one of my guiding stars as a musician living in a country very scarce on musical commitment. Let's hope the future holds as more than it would seem at the moment.

Working as a musician in Norway is a great challenge. Few, if any, of our politicians advocate cultural spendings, and it seems that all our political parties are careful to confine their cultural ambitions to the paper these are written on.

Last year I mentioned that it took Japanese currency to revitalize the neglected and disrepaired Munch museum in Oslo. As it happens, my 15 year old son Jonas plays soccer on the same team as Kristin Halvorsen's (leader of SV - Sosialistisk Venstreparti) son Håvard. The other day I met her in connection with both of our sons leaving for a soccer camp in Denmark, and I gave her the following challenge: If SV get's the minister of culture at the next election, the money recieved from Idemitsu Petrolem Norge AS for renovation of our musem, should be paid back with interest.