Ultima Podcast

How is music made – and under what conditions? Which rituals, tools, and spaces do artists return to when composing, performing, producing or improvising? With whom do they collaborate, and what shapes their sound?

Listen-Up is a live “audiozine” that brings together artists from across genres to explore how music takes form today. The event is inspired by When Music Takes Shape, an Arts Council Norway research programme and publication that gathers scientific and artistic reflections on music-making processes and working conditions in contemporary Norway.

‘Musicians are trained to listen, and the best of us try to communicate what we hear, both from the world around us and from inside ourselves.’ David Harrington is a violinist and the founding member of Kronos Quartet.

In this episode, Rob Young meets Harrington to talk about Kronos’ long-standing commitment to contemporary music, listening as an ethical practice, and the quartet’s constant search for new sounds and new collaborators. The conversation centres on Elja, a new work created with Norwegian composers Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen, inspired by the vast mountain plateau of Hardangervidda.

Harrington reflects on playing newly developed Hardanger instruments, on learning from tradition while opening it to new sonic worlds, and on why music, in unstable times, can still bring people together and help us listen more closely to the world around us.

Produced by Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival

Written and presented by Rob Young

Edited by Solveig Sørbø

Theme music by Kristine Tjøgersen

Visit us on ultima.no.

‘The explanation is actually the process — the courageto stay in movement and not know where you are going.’

In this episode, Rob Young meets Ewa Jacobsson and herlong-term collaborator Hilde Marie Holsen to talk about Labyrinthic Explanation of Knowledge, a large-scale installation and concert work presented at Ultima 2025. They discuss how their collaboration grew out of shared listening, material exploration and a mutual interest in sound as something physical, spatial and alive.

Together, they reflect on working with found objects, sound circuits and live trumpet, on the idea of the labyrinth as a place of uncertainty and discovery, and on forms of knowledge that resist efficiency, productivity and clear-cut answers — but remain deeply necessary today.

Produced by ⁠Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival⁠

Written and presented by Rob Young

Edited by Solveig Sørbø

Theme music by Kristine Tjøgersen

Visit us on ultima.no.

‘We wanted to forget the stage, forget the constant changes, and give the audience the freedom to choose their own perspective.’ Tom Pauwels is a guitarist and artistic director of the Ictus Ensemble.

In this episode, Rob Young meets soprano Nina Guo alongside Tom Pauwels to talk about Liquid Room XII: A Perfect Life, presented at Ultima 2025. Together they discuss the Liquid Room format as a roaming, immersive concert experience — part performance, part mini-festival — where audiences are free to move, listen closely, or drift between sound worlds.

The conversation explores Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives as the core of the evening, and how its dreamlike, speech-based music connects to works by Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Jessie Cox, Tom Johnson and others. Guo and Pauwels reflect on voice, listening, collaboration and preparation, and on how disparate pieces are woven into a fluid night of shared attention, sonic streams and poetic parallels.

Produced by Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival

Written and presented by Rob Young

Edited by Solveig Sørbø

Theme music by Kristine Tjøgersen

Visit us on ultima.no.

‘I think we're talking about recognizing the things that are bigger than us and the things that are unknowable in in the universe.’ Raven Chacon is an artist, composer and musician born in the Navajo Nation. 

In this episode Rob Young meets Raven while he was in Oslo in September 2024. He talks about the thinking behind his performance work Tremble Staves (2017–19), which was a highlight of the Ultima Festival. 

Iselin Shumba gives exclusive readings from Sarah Zahid’s powerful poetic text, created as an element of the Oslo performance.

Written and presented by Rob Young

Readings of Sarah Zahid by Iselin Shumba

Editing by Solveig Sørbø

Theme music by Kristine Tjøgersen

Raven Chacon: https://spiderwebsinthesky.com

Ultima Festival: https://www.ultima.no/

A special micropod audioguide to the opening concert of Ultima 2024. Sound artists Chris Watson and Jana Winderen tell Rob Young about their commissioned piece fathom, a symphony of field recordings captured above and below the Norwegian Sea between Oslo and the mysterious Jan Mayen Island.

Writer, interviewer, presenter: Rob Young

Editor: Solveig Sørbø

Rob Young travels with Maja S.K. Ratkje and Paola Palavidi as they prepare to launch Pytheas Travels, a musical/visual cocktail of surreal maritime experiences connecting ancient exploration with modern tourism. 

For more info, see https://www.ultima.no/en/pytheas-travels Ultima Festival 14–23 September 2023: ultima.no

Recorded and presented by: Rob Young

Sound editing: Silje Vemøy

Sound mix: Ådne Hallas at Filt Oslo

Original music: Kristine Tjøgersen

Thanks to Maja S.K. Ratkje and Hypercomf for permission to include sound clips from Pytheas Travels.

Rob Young discusses the music and legacy of German band Einstürzende Neubauten with Chris Bohn – Editor in Chief of The Wire magazine. As a music journalist with the New Musical Express in the early 1980s, Chris was the first British writer to interview and champion the group, whose name means 'collapsing new buildings'. In this conversation recorded live at Kulturhuset, Oslo, during the 2022 Ultima Festival, he shares inside stories from the group's history, apocalyptic sound, and the Cold War Berlin where they were formed. 

Presenter: Rob Young

Producer: Regine Døsen Kristoffersen @ Filt Oslo

Sound mix: Daniel Daatland

Original music: Kristine Tjøgersen

In a live conversation recorded during this year's Ultima Festival, Rob Young meets New York based composer Missy Mazzoli – 'Brooklyn's post-millennial Mozart' – Time Out NY) to hear about the ideas that inspired her new opera The Listeners. We also hear about her previous work with her band Victoire and her earlier acclaimed operas, with librettist Royce Vavrek and director Lileana Blaine-Cruz. 

https://missymazzoli.com

Ultima Festival 15–24 September 2022: full programme at ultima.no

Presenter: Rob Young

Producer: Regine Døsen Kristoffersen @ Filt Oslo

Sound mix: Daniel Daatland

Original music: Kristine Tjøgersen

Ultima 2022 opens on 15 September. The theme of this year’s festival – Freedom is Around the Corner – comes from an artwork by the late Danish artist/agitator Henning Christiansen. Rob Young explores this idea and its relevance to contemporary music and modern day utopian and dystopian thinking. Episode features interviews with Lena Lindgren (author of Ekko) and Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen (artistic director of Ultima).

Ultima Festival 15–24 September 2022: full programme at ultima.no

Presenter: Rob Young

Producer: Regine Døsen Kristoffersen @ Filt Oslo

Sound mix: Daniel Daatland

Original music: Kristine Tjøgersen

Also featuring extracts from: 180 Hammer Blows Against War Monkeys by Henning Christiansen