PLAYING CONCERTS IN CAVES
IN THE FAROE ISLANDS
By Kristian Blak

For my entire career nature has played an essential role in my composition. My first jazz-suite was Snjóuglan from 1978 (the Snowy Owl) where all titles relate to nature. Gradually actual nature sounds found their way into the music. First a recording of a croacking raven in dialogue with John Tchicai's bass clarinet in one part of Ravnating (1982). Next year I widened the concept with recorded sounds of ocean, wind, falling rocks and running water playing an integrated part of the composition Heygar og Dreygar - also at live concerts. So to say, this had one obvious conclusion: Why not play concerts IN nature itself., where sounds would play an active role along with the musicians? A friend of mine, the artist Ole Wich, showed me a beautiful cave in the island of Sandoy, Líðargjógv" - and that immediately kindled my imagination. I wrote a concerto for improvisers in a baroque form: "Concerto Grotto", and in August 1984, after great physical effort actually, we had solved the technical problems of getting equipment for 7 musicians and electric power supply to the grotto - and we had a magnificent experience. However I felt that this effort was so technically risky, especially the weather conditions here in Faroe are little predictable. So we all regarded this first concert as a lifetime experience, not to be repeated.

But the farmer, Páll í Dalsgarði, on the other side of Sandoy wanted it to be different. Legend says that the cave continues under the islands and comes out in Bláfellskútin. I had already composed a suite Antifonale for this much more open place, so one day Páll asked me "Why don't you also play in my cave" - "Well yes you are somehow right! Let's do that next summer". This time we did not come from over the mountains like in '84. We sailed with the wooden sailing vessel Norðlýsið. The Bláfellskútin is a coastal "shelter" and a third of the audience were seals listening at a distance.

During this trip the skipper of Norðlýsið, Birgir Enni, suggested that we should continue cave concerts from the ocean. So next year, in 1996, we had our first concerts in the oceanic cathedral of Klæmintsgjógv. Here we could enter in small boats with musicians and with the audience. Here the ocean is the bottom, the floor, and in good conditions, this gives a fantastic acoustic atmosphere. Playing just one tone is at the same time asking a question - what will come back. That is rarely quite predictable, because the remark you made, may have been swallowed by the sound of a wave - or have been given extra resonance from the smooth ocean floor.

Performing in boats of course have restrictions as to bringing instruments and too many musicians. In general we arrange solo or duo concerts - or sometimes up to 4 or 5 musicians. That works really well. Also choral music. With so much sound from the actual room and so much sound back, you do not need to be very many. We have battery equipment for amplifying guitar and keyboard when they are used.

The music for Klæmintsgjógv and these other watery concert halls naturally will be inspired by and in a way dominated by the nature. Many pieces written - or thought - for these places I have only performed there. They simply are based so much in composition on the effects in the room, that it looses relevance elsewhere. On the other hand some music is fine in both contexts. For the Klæmintsgjógv Grotto I wrote the piece Klæmint. In 1998 we actually used the grotto as a recording studio for several months to record this suite. There is more than one hours sailing involved each way to reach the place, so this cave has so far been my most tricky recording studio host. But - the CD was actually released.

From then on regularly we sail out with a boatful of listeners - up to 50 at a time, so it is quite exclusive.

Each year we have national and international artists on the programme - to mention a few: Anders Jormin, Eero Koivistoinen, Palle Mikkelborg, John Purcell, Richardo Villar, Anders Hagberg, Håkan Hagegård, Steve Houbert, Heðin Ziska Davidsen.

Often we record the sessions and a couple of these we have released on CD. One with Karsten Vogel and me and another with John Tchicai. To perform and also record with musicians that during all their musical career have been the foremost "listeners" in creative music has been an special pleasure. They communicated from their first note in the cave with the reactions from the room, from waves, from other musicians - from audience as well. And visual effects. As light thanges with light from the cave opening 100 meters from you, musicians can complement the light in their own interpretation. The cave "system" is like a nature made metro. One narrow cave about 3 meters wide, but quite high, cuts about 500 meters in one angle into the mountain side. 90 degrees out from this Smaligjógv (Narrow Cave) come Húsagjóv (House Cave) and last Klæmintsgjógv (Cave of Klæmint - a man's name) which is 200 meters deep. Innermost - last 100 meters - there is rocks, but it is not always possible to get onto dry land. There must be very calm weather for that.

Altogether 4 CDs have been released with Grotto Music: The first one in 1984 "Concerto Grotto", then "Klæmint" in 1998. The two recent recordings are with soloists, that have played an important role of inspiration for me and for the Faroese musical life as a whole. Saxophone player Karsten Vogel first visited Faroe Islands on tour with his rock band Burning Red Ivanhoe in the early 70ties. Later he came as a soloist to play with local musicians again and again. This resulted in his participation in several bands and recordings as well. A band still coming together with intervals is his own Faroese band Fagrir Fuglar in which I play keyboard, that recorded his suite Veðurløg - Weather Music in 1981. A music based on the many facettes of the Faroese weather.

The cave concerts - Vogel made 3 the same week 2000 - went really well, so well that we decided to release a CD with a selection of the recordings that were made that summer. This CD features the saxophone in the oceanic caves. My role on the keyboard is quite discrete, letting the full reverbation of the horn come to its right. Vogels recording is called Light when Dark.

John Tchicai was invited to play and have workshops in Tórshavn Jazzclub in 1979. Tchicai then came back on a yearly basis, leaving inspiration not at least to my own composition and playing. I asked him to join a new band I formed for a concert and recording of Den Yderste Ø (the island Furthest out). The band took the name of the Nordic world tree Yggdrasil, and is still performing. With Yggdrasil Tchicai toured and recorded regularly through the 80ties. However when he moved from Denmark to California it became less convenient. But after a (too) long interval he came back especially to perform in Klæmintsgjógv in the year 2000. Tchicai had composed music to perform there for saxophone and percussion. In addition we formed a improvisational quintet that can be heard on most of the CD. Tchicai was well prepared, so to say, because he was one of the "original cave men" from Concerto Grotto in '84. Our concert - recording of it called Anybody Home? - took place under the very best weather conditions for cave concerts. Sometimes almost complete silence, other moments the ocean came with comments. The light that afternoon was quite bright shining through the opening of the cave, and weather permitted that we could hav music and audiences on land.

For my own part as a musician I have taken a pleasure in playing contrasting music during each concert in the caves. I have been playing a keyboard and with enough amplification to play as well scaringly loud to make the cave turn into a monster's den as extremely soft. Softer even than the sounds of the ocean's rippling - so that you really do not know where man-made music ends and natural sounds begin.

Published 2003 at French magazine JazzoSphère

© Kristian Blak. Raven photos © Philippe Carré