ArtistInfo

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard

sax, as, rec, *1979
Jazz and Classical
A.k.a. Johannes Richter

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities. Working within the domains of physical and imaginary sound, Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard seeks to stimulate new ways of approaching sound as heard in the SOUND X SOUND series, or in his work with sonic potentiality and music for the inner ear - an imaginary kind of music only hearable for the inner ear of the listener. “I try to reinvent the instrument from a constructive zero. Create new music and create new ways of listening, and I work with multiplication of sound as a way to make the wellknown sound dissolve and reappear as a new sound”. (NLL) Working with physical sound: Over the recent years Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear as new, untouched sound. In the work series SOUND X SOUND he explores this by way of multiplication. He has written and recorded the seven pieces of SOUND X SOUND from 2013 to 2016 – a series of works multiplying one instrument a number of times: One piece is written for 9 pianos, another for 18 clarinets, 10 hi-hats and so on. The multiplication brings out new timbral phenomena, interference of sound waves and vibrations, and brings out what Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard calls the sound’s potential of transformation. He describes this as the quality in a musical piece, when you no longer hear recognisable instruments, but instead the individual sound, as well as the individual musician, is dissolved into the collective sound. He explains the concept of this sound as follows: “Imagine you enter a room with vibrant acoustics, such as a cafe full of people having conversations, and when you’re close to those conversations you hear the language and understand the words. If you step away from the tables, however, and stand in the doorway, you begin to loose the ability to distinguish the words from one another. Now instead of hearing the individual conversations, melts all the conversations together, and transform into a one new sound. A sound of people without words and language. Just as when you hear a group of geese squawk, or the wind in tree tops, a kind of nature given sound of people. Once the language is dissolved and the words stop making sense, what is left, is the sound. Clean, free of meaning and open to all ears."

Instruments

• Saxophone
• Alto sax
• Recorder
• Flute
• Clarinet

Genres

• Jazz
• Classical
• Electronic

ArtistInfo App

Acknowledgements

ArtistInfo for Mac, iPad, and iPhone