Une Villanelle by HANS APPELQVIST

Exclusive premiere of the new concert performance by Hans Appelqvist. Mixing live music with programmed video and lights the show follows three characters that try to convey what’s going on inside their inner minds - through words and music. No big drama, only everyday life and shifting moods.

Une Villanelle is a 19-line poem with a fixed structure and two repeating refrains. This rigid form serves as a framework, inspiring the musical and visual ideas of the work.

///// Hans Appelqvist builds sonic worlds where logic bends and emotions glitch. Composer, conceptualist, and subverter of form—his work resists easy categorisation. Emerging in the early 2000s, Appelqvist’s discography reads like a secret map: intricate, emotional, and full of detours. Across the years, he’s shaped a signature language—layered electronics, found sound, musique concrète sensibilities—all threaded through odd meters and a kaleidoscopic palette of instrumentation. Whether it's detuned folk motifs or theatrical jazz fragments, his sound is always edging towards the uncanny. His 2019 Intonal performance Have You Ever Seen Visitor Q? was a masterstroke in musical discomfort. Inspired by Takashi Miike’s cult provocation, the piece leaned into the aesthetics of “body genres,” aiming not just for the ears but the nervous system—uneasy, aroused, and disrupted. More recently, his 2023 release In the Basement of Apollo Hall plunges into the philosophical. Taking cues from Nietzsche’s Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, the album (and its accompanying short film) stages a sonic tug-of-war between structure and surrender. It’s heady, yes—but never without feeling. Beyond the concert hall, Appelqvist’s recent scores span the surreal and the sublime: from Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s acclaimed animation The Burden, to Andreas Nilsson’s Claudio’s Song (Sundance, 2023), and Barbet Schroeder’s documentary Ricardo et la Peinture. In 2019, his soundtrack for Marcus Lindeen’s The Raft earned him the IDA Award for Best Original Score. RIYL: Félicia Atkinson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Maja S. K. Ratkje, Valerio Tricoli, Kali Malone, Mats Erlandsson, Takashi Miike, Conceptual composition, Sonic collage, Audio-visual storytelling, Musique concrète, Ryoji Ikeda, Park Chan-wook, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky.

sifantin.net The short film In the Basement of Apollo Hall: https://www.svtplay.se/video/8PB2pq3/psl/videopremiar-hans-appelqvist?video=visa

Concert is included in the AW25 Season Pass