2010 Schedule of Events

Mike Olson is a Minneapolis based composer, producer, and sound artist, who operates his own custom audio and media production company, Intuitive. His process involves the construction of compositions from many small musical fragments. These fragments are performed by live musicians, recorded, edited and then loaded into a software program where he constructs the actual composition. Olson writes, “The pieces that I've been able to create using this new technique have been the purest, most refined personal musical expressions that I've ever been able to achieve. This new music feels right to me and is intensely personal.”

Noopiming is one in Olson’s series of fragment-based compositions. It's an a cappella choral piece, consisting of one movement only, with a single, clearly defined aesthetic focus. The recording was done in the St. Paul Seminary chapel, lending an otherworldly feel to the composition. Noopiming is an Ojibwe word which translates as "in the North, inland, in the woods.” All of the vocalizations in the piece use various constituent elements of the word Noopiming as their "text.” Olson writes, “I like the idea of using this word because it re-enforces my aesthetic focus of visualizing the landscape as a wild and natural place of great beauty, the way it would have looked long ago in ancient times. I've been drawing on the deep personal feelings I have for the powerfully beautiful landscapes of far Northern Minnesota, as inspiration for the piece."

For photographic accompaniment, Olson selected the Boundary Waters work of Dale Robert Klous, the primordial quality of which he found to be strikingly in keeping with the spirit of the piece.