Arnt Håkon Ånesen was born January 20th 1977. He grew up in Groenaas, Fauske in North-Norway and moved to Oslo in 1996. Here he first started his instrumental-studies in Tuba with professor Torbjoern Kvist at The Norwegian Academy of Music, before he began his bachelor-studies in Composition at the same academy with the professors Lasse Thoresen, Bjoern Kruse, Olav Anton Thommesen and Ivar Frounberg. He also has done a postgraduate study in music teaching, where teaching composition was his main focus.
Since then he has worked as freelance composer, composition-teacher and conductor in Oslo. He is not an active tuba-player, but brings with him the knowledge of brass instruments in his compositions; especially the experience of being “the ground” in orchestras, where Ånesen experimented much about how small variations of intonation in the tuba affected other instrument’s overtones and so on the whole sound of the orchestra. Much of his experimental tonal music is based on this.
The commissions for compositions he has worked with have varied both in style and concept. He has for instant cooperated with other artists, especially Hilde Aagaard in making links between sounds and objects. His work “Point” for solo violin, commissioned by Aagaard, was performed non-stop for three months at Ileana Tounta Centre of Contemporary Arts, Athens, before entering Philopappos Hill, being played towards Acropolis in context to Aagaard’s art. Ånesen has also cooperated with the Russian pianist Julia Strelchenko, producing two works for the piano as a result of that.
In 2005 The Norwegian Academy of Music commissioned a piece for 9 trombones for their students, to start a tradition of commissioning pieces from former composition-students graduated from the academy. This became the work “Janus”.
Same year he wrote “Explicit Duality” for Flute and Horn in F, following up the metamusical theme about dualism from “Janus”. This piece was written to Trond M. L. Brekka and Erlend T. Larsen, both musicians in Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
Lately he has been working on a grant from The Norwegian Composer’s Compensation Fund, writing two pieces; one for sinfonietta called “Change-reaction” and one for 23 wind instruments and 4 percussion-players called “To enter”.
Ånesen has written three symphonies, although they are all under revision at the moment and not completely finished yet. A characteristic aspect of them is however that the wind-parts have the leading role, while the string instruments supplements these. This is probably because of his experience as a tuba-player and familiarity of the wind-sound. Although he has written for string-instruments in essence too; being “Partnerskap” for string-trio and “Variations for String Quartet”.
Ånesen also works with educational compositions. At the moment he is writing a work for child concert band, commissioned by Kampen Primary School Concert Band on support from The Norwegian Composer’s Fund.
TONO, the Norwegian Performing Rights Society, of which Ånesen has been a member since 1996, have given Ånesen two scholarships, one for higher education and one for traveling and inspiration. The last one was used to visit Australia in order to study Australian culture.
Ånesen is a member of New Music Composers Group within the Norwegian section of the ISCM. When composing Arnt Håkon Ånesen likes to work with concepts and ideas in a dialectic communication between intuition and systems. He believes that in the free thought there is a system in itself, and that the search within it, will produce the order chaos seem to be in the first place.
Currently he is doing the Advanced studies in Composition at The Norwegian Academy of Music (a master degree), which is a postgraduate Composition course in which one will be concentrating on developing one’s individuality as a composer. Ånesen hopes to establish a method for composing during this course, based on an equal relationship between intuition and form, which can result not only in music, but also in text for educational use.
