Bio:
Kim André Arnesen (b. 1980) is one of the most frequently performed classical composers from Norway today. He grew up in Trondheim, and while being a daily follower of MTV, and no one understood why he was such a big The Cure fan at the age of 10, he also played the piano at the music school and was a chorister in the Nidaros Cathedral Boys´ Choir.
He was educated at the Music Conservatory in Trondheim. With a big interest in baroque music, contemporary classical music, and popular music, Kim could have taken many roads, but choral music became his greatest passion. As a composer, he had his first performance at the age of 18 with the boys´ choir. Since then he has written music that has been performed by choirs all over the world.
In 2010, his first large-scale work, Magnificat was commissioned and premiered by the Nidaros Cathedral Girls´ Choir. The premiere got an overwhelming feedback leading to several new commissions. A recording was released by 2L in 2014 and the album has received excellent reviews in Gramophone, Choir & Organ and other classical magazines. Gramophone calls the music "haunting, beautifully arched, warmly compassionate".
In 2011 his choral work Even when He is silent had its premiere during the St. Olav Festival (Olavsfestdagene) in Trondheim. The piece was commissioned by the festival and has since its premiere been performed many times around the world and recorded on several CDs.
In 2013 Even when He is silent and Cradle Hymn featured in the TV production "Christmas in Norway" with St. Olaf Choir and Nidaros Cathedral Girls' Choir. Cradle Hymn has been the bestseller of Santa Barbara Music's Christmas music in 2014, 2015 and 2016. In 2016 it was performed at The White House for President Barack Obama.
In April 2014 his Requiem was premiered by the Nidaros Cathedral Boys' Choir, and the work had its U.S. premiere in April 2015. The work had its New York City premiere at Carnegie Hall in January 2017, in a production with the Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY).
Kim was the Composer-in-residence for the Denver-based choral ensemble Kantorei and Artistic Director Joel Rinsema in their 2015/16 Season, which will end with Kim's second CD album to be released in January 2018 by Naxos. In 2016 the new large-scale work The Wound in the Water was premiered during the St. Olaf Festival in Trondheim, with Conspirare, conductor Craig Hella Johnson, soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, and TrondheimSolistene.
The National Lutheran Choir commissioned the Holy Spirit Mass in commemoration of 500 years since the reformation and was premiered in Washington D. C. and Minneapolis in 2017. Several new commissioned anthem length pieces were premiered throughout 2017 including a commissioned work for the Texas Choral Directors Association and Oregon Bach Festival. In 2018 the album INFINITY was released by Naxos with the Denver choir Kantorei and conductor Joel Rinsema. The album included a selection of Kim's choral works. In 2018, the 5th large-scale work Tuvayhun - Beatitudes for a Wounded World with lyrics by Charles Anthony Silvestri was premiered in New York City by the Manhattan Girls Chorus. In October 2018 the work So That the World May Believe was premiered in Rome together with the European premiere of the "Holy Spirit Mass."
Kim is an elected member of the Norwegian Composers Society, and a full-time composer focusing on choral music. From September 2017 he has signed with Boosey & Hawkes as one of their house composers.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).