Simon Steen-Andersen belongs to the youngest generation of Danish composers, but he has already made his mark both on the Danish scene and abroad. Despite his young age, he has lived and studied in such diverse places as Aarhus, Paris, Freiburg, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen and Rome. His travels may be interpreted as a continuing quest for both exterior and interior challenges for his musical concepts. Simon Steen-Andersen states that he is “trying to approach the human being behind the instrument, because then music can suddenly be about everything that is most important: communication, being, fragility and intimacy". In his latest works, barely audible sounds are subjected to extreme amplification, as if the instruments are placed under a microscope. This opens up a rich micro-world of new sounds, in which normally suppressed or hidden subordinated sounds are integrated into an intense imagery of sounds. Often the amplified micro-sounds are contrasted with unamplified music played as loudly as possible on dampened or hampered instruments.
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