Thorolf Thuestad
Thorolf Thuestad is a sound artist, composer, sound designer, performer, sound and art technician.
Thorolf has worked extensively with stage arts, contemporary music and sound installations, and has among other things toured around the world with the New York Bessie award-winning art collective Verdensteatret. With Verdensteatret and as part of Transiteatret, received multiple Norwegian Hedda prizes, and a Gabler prize.
Thorolf has created sound design for full scale operas performed at The Norwegian Opera and internationally, and for main stage productions at The National Stage in Bergen. He has also scored a number of short and feature films.
He is much sought after as a specialist in the realisation of electronic and electroacoustic music, and has worked extensively with live electronics in contemporary music, recently co-operating with composer Knut Vaage for the 250th anniversary of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
In the period 2004-2007 Thorolf held the position of director of sound and music at the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK). In 2011 he instigated the formation of the art collective An Index of Collisions, a Bergen based constellation that create kinetic sculptures, musical instruments, text, stage art and film, with the aim of creating a fertile interplay between these elements.
In 2015 with composer and performer Alwynne Pritchard, he formed Neither Nor. Neither Nor is a Bergen-based music-theatre company working from the premise of music as a cognitive process, a way of thinking, Neither Nor addresses means of making music-driven theatre. Investigating causal relationships between music, language, the human body, stage action, mechanics, kinetics, electronics and environment. Neither Nor addresses and redefines the balance of power between music and the many social structures it inhabits.
Thorolf Thuestad has twice been awarded the Norwegian Arts Council one year artist’s stipend.
As well as developing three projects for Neither Nor: The Art of Violin Playing, Heiner Müller’s Die Hamletmaschine and Kafka Underground, the latter two both with Scènes Théâtre Cinéma from Lyon, Thorolf is currently developing a new electroacoustic opera based on the life of Tyco Brahe in collaboration with Ursus Productions: Roar Sletteland, Sigurd Fischer Olsen and Lena Buchacz.
Thorolf Thuestad is also a member of Bergen’s BIT20 ensemble, with responsibility for sound and performance electronics in their productions.
Thorolf Thuestad has recently taken up a position as a research fellow at the University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design. (2020)
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