Next To Beside Besides #1 An abstractly conceived piece of music will still be the same piece even though played on instruments with essentially different types of movements. But what if the abstract composition was directed towards the movements? What if the composition was thought of as a choreography for musician and instrument –with sound as a consequence? Then the same piece would sound completely different on instruments with different relations between movement and sound. And would it then be the same piece at all?
The re-cycle ”Next To Beside Besides”is an open series of choreographical translations of the piece ”Beside Besides”(for solo cello), a piece that already in it self is a spin-off from the ensemble piece ”Besides”. (”Besides” was, beside the meaning ”besides...” or ”b-sides”, ”back-sides”, meant as the non-
existing plural of being next to).
The many different degrees of abstractness and concreteness between pure sound and pure movement in ”Beside Besides” will result in translations that contain exactly equally sounding passages (where the music is thought abstract or in sound) and very different sounding passages (where the music for example is based on gradual linear movements in different dimensions). To experience these degrees of differences one has to hear the different versions next to each other – this could be one after another, or maybe even better: simultaneously! The cycle is in other words not just an open row of variations, versions or solutions of different problems and methods of translation – it also gives the opportunity to put together innumerous of combinations of heterofonically sounding, but movement wise ”unison” ensemble compositions, where difference and equality are in focus – where the translation situation in itself becomes a musical parameter.
Every piece can be played alone or in any combination of versions, simultaneously or one after the other as movements or between other pieces as fragments.
Every piece must be equally faithful to the original, which also means being equally idiomatic and faithful to
the instrument in focus!

Read more in the pdf.

All instruments are amplified.

This work is very flexible. Each piece can be played alone or in any combination. As the composer says: 'NTBB for amplified solo instrument or as movement or part in any of pieces from the NTBB series'.

The NTBB serie is composed from 2003 to 2007. It contents 11 pieces with a duration of 4 minutes each.