Ultima 2026 is launched! Check out the festival programme, festival guides and venues this year.

10–19 September 2026

Festival Programme 2026 35% off with ultiMATE

And Now, the Weather

Cikada · IEMA · Saariaho · Torvund · Hartman · Køppe · Bång

Friday 18 September, at 18:00–20:15

Kulturkirken Jakob

225–350 kr

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Light winds from the northwest, occasional aurora, probability of Mars dust: 40%. What the forecast cannot tell you is what any of this will feel like from the inside.

Tonight’s conditions: Cikada, one of Norway’s defining contemporary music ensembles, and the emerging musicians of International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) play music by Kaija Saariaho and premieres by four Nordic composers, in an evening tuned to weather both earthly and interplanetary.

It begins with the body. In Malin Bång’s flock of fleeting hands, eighteen hands move as one collective organism. Hanna Hartman’s Advanced Weather Information Processing System brings the forecast down to matter: cutlery against terracotta, Velcro and polystyrene, sandpaper, and a bass drum played with a rubber ball. From these materials emerge rain, wind, waves, and chaotic accumulation.

Beneath the Arctic sky, as the northern lights spread across the darkness, Kaija Saariaho found the first ideas for Lichtbogen. Its shimmering textures and harmonies seem to catch something of that light. Øyvind Torvund lets a string quartet dream of synthesisers, mechanical birdsong and sounds they were never built to make. Olivia Køppe reaches further still, placing voices from the archive around the audience so that a century of human fascination with Mars arrives as signals from very far away.

Program

IEMA International Ensemble Modern Academy

18:00–18:15

Hanna Hartmann: Advanced Weather Information Processing System (2025)

15'

World premiere of ensemble version

18:15–18:30

Olivia Køppe: Blues for a red planet (2026) for ensemble, tape and electronics

15'

World premiere

18:30–18:40

Kaija Saariaho: Lichtbogen (1986) for ensemble and electronics

17'

Program

Cikada Ensemble

19:00–19:25

Øyvind Torvund: 5 pieces for string quartet (2024)

25'

Commissioned by Cikada, supported by Norsk Komponistfond

World premiere

19:25–19:55

Malin Bång: flock of fleeting hands for ensemble (2026)

30'

Commissioned by Cikada, supported by Arts Council Norway

World premiere

Want to know more?

All works except Saariaho’s Lichtbogen receive their world premiere this night.
Malin Bång on her new piece for Cikada: ‘The ensemble can be viewed through the lens of a small society: a community that maintains sustainability, and that supports those who are challenged and vulnerable.’
Olivia Køppe on her new piece for IEMA: ‘I want to make a work that reflects historically on contemporary discussions about space exploration.’ The symbolic power of Mars shapes three archival layers in the piece: a 1938 American radio programme, scientific voices from the 1970s, and sound recorded on Mars by the Perseverance rover in 2021.
Øyvind Torvund also features in Ultima’s opening concert, Magic Fantastic, and in Untitled School and Other Strange Lessons.