Jan Martin Smordal - My Favorite Thing

Between 2015-2017, Smordal composed 3 works under the name My Favorite Thing, consisting of music for the percussion trio Pinquins (MFT 1), Ensemble neoN (MFT 2), and the Broadcasting Orchestra (MFT 3). Based on interviews with all participating performers, Smordal has interpreted the performers' formative encounters with music from childhood. The works consist of direct quotations, abstracted reflections and free retellings.

Smordal has long been concerned with mechanisms behind herd behaviour, reflex movements, self-standing patterns and spontaneous social dynamics. Thoughts about such phenomena, and concretizing and interpreting such phenomena as sound and flow, have been the springboard for much of my work over the past 10 years. On this release you can hear an early example of this, where an individual's short-term memory forms an entire swarm, Flock of me played by Yumi Murakami.

The disc also contains another early work less-sense. The piece was written for and performed by Silje Aker Johnsen, Kristine Tjogersen and Ane Marthe Sorlien Holen. Through a text fragment by Augustine, the I-person tries to remove his former self, gradually by unraveling his own note.

Jan Martin Smordal (b.1978) is a composer and performer. He is also a member and co-founder of Ensemble neoN, an award-winning new music collective that initiates and implements projects internationally. Sm�rdal is an established composer with works for orchestra and chamber ensembles, in addition to installations, choral works and improvisations in various forms. He is co-recipient of a number of Spellemannprize, and in 2022 received Arne Nordheim's Composer's Prize.