“Ellen Lindquist’s music is consistently excellent: spacious, but also dense and rich.”
—Friday, June 19, 2009, Johan Lif, Västmanlands Läns Tidning, Sweden

“Ellen Lindquists musik är genomgående utmärkt: spatiös, men också tät och innehållsrik.”
—Fredag 19 juni 2009, Johan Lif, Västmanlands Läns Tidning, Sverige

Full review (English translation below):
Johan Lif, Fredag 19 juni 2009, Västmanlands Läns Tidning
Musik, drömseminarium
Västerås Konserthus, Västerås, Sverige

English translation by Henny Linn Kjellberg:

Johan Lif, Fredag 19 juni 2009, Västmanlands Läns Tidning
Music-theatre review, drömseminarium
Västerås Concerthouse, Västerås, Sweden

Instead of presenting a completed production, the ensemble has let the audience follow their work’s creation through a series of open workshops over several years’ time.

drömseminarium will gradually become a chamber opera based on Tomas Tranströmer’s poems.

At the Concerthouse yesterday they presented a cohesive hour-long musical drama. How much of what we saw yesterday will be left when drömseminarium has its premiere in 2010, we don’t know.

The ensemble — with musicians mainly from USA but also from Sweden, Canada, Spain and France — is collectively trying and rejecting ideas during the creation workshops.

Since drömseminarium still is in creation it feels difficult, and also unfair, to write a regular review.

The dramatic elements yesterday were sometimes successful — as when the musicians and singers moved as a group in a low-key humorous choreography — and from time to time overly theatrical.

Songs alternate between Swedish and English in a way that is sometimes irritating, but also sometimes sets the words in an unexpected way.

Although the shape is changing it seems like the ensemble has found a tone and an interaction that functions, and that assures good things.

Ellen Lindquist’s music is consistently excellent: spacious, but also dense and rich. Particularly striking is the suggestive tone setting of the poem Further In, where long chords are played over the piano and marimba figures. Let us hope that this piece will stay for 2010.