CMA Concerts at Transformer Station

For her debut Cleveland performance, join us for an evening of voice and electronics from Norway's most dynamic composer/performer, Maja Ratkje, an artist "who can genuinely be said to be extending the expressive range of the voice through technical and technological means." -The Wire.

Tickets are $20 ($18 for CMA members) and available online, at the Cleveland Museum of Art box office, and Transformer Station. Please be advised seating is very limited. 

About this City Stages Concert Series: 
Setting a standard for vanguard art, the Transformer Station also heralds a new space for adventurous music. This fall marks the start of a series of intimate and (mostly) solo concerts presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art, featuring composed and improvised music by some of the most remarkable artists of our time. Virtuosic on every level.

About Maja Ratkje:

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, composer and performer, finished composition studies at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo in 2000. Her music is performed worldwide by performers such as Klangforum Wien, Oslo Sinfonietta, The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Fretwork, TM+, Cikada and Bozzini string quartets, Quatuor Renoir, crashEnsemble, Pearls for Swine Experience, Torben Snekkestad, Marianne Beate Kielland, SPUNK, Frode Haltli, POING and many more. Portrait concerts with her music has been heard in Toronto and Vienna, she has been composer in residence at festivals like Other Minds in San Francisco, Nordland Music Festival in Bodø, Avanti! Summer Festival in Finland, Båstad Chamber Music Festival, and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Ratkje has received awards such as the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris for under-30 composers, the Norwegian Edvard prize (work of the year) twice, second prize at the Russolo Foundation, and in 2001 she was the first composer ever to receive the Norwegian Arne Nordheim prize. Her solo album Voice, made in collaboration with Jazzkammer, got a Distinction Award at Prix Ars Electronica in 2003. She is nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize this year.

Ratkje is active as a singer/voice user and electronics performer and engineer, as a soloist or in groups such as SPUNK. Other collaborations are with Jaap Blonk, Joëlle Léandre, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Stian Westerhus, Stephen O’Malley, Lasse Marhaug and POING. Ratkje has performed her own music for films, dance and theatre, installations, and numerous other projects. She makes large art installations with SPUNK and deals often with visual arts in her work. She has made music for a radio play by Elfriede Jelinek, and in 2003, she played a leading part in her own opera, based on the texts from the Nag Hammadi Library. In 2005 she performed the voice solo part of her first big work for orchestra, commissioned by Radio France. She has also been soloist with Klangforum Wien, Oslo Sinfonietta and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In 2013 she is nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for her work as performer.

Her scores are found at the Norwegian Music Information Centre and her records are released on Tzadik, Rune Grammofon, ECM, and many others.

This concert series is presented at:

The Transformer Station is a new contemporary art museum on Cleveland’s west side, owned by the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation. For six months a year, the Cleveland Museum of Art will present exhibitions with internationally recognized artists, using it as a creative laboratory.

For hours and other information, visit transformerstation.org.