Josefine Opsahl

Born in 1992, the Danish artist, composer, and cellist Josefine Opsahl combines music, art, performance, spatial concepts, and electronics in her works. She is one of few in her generation who has succeeded in creating and refining a truly original and contemporary form of expression. With a liberating openness to all sounds and genres, Josefine unfolds her works between tradition and renewal, expertise and intuition, notation and improvisation. She incorporates her classical music training and historical knowledge, as well as her perception of art and herself, into new expressive media.

Josefine composes, curates, improvises, and performs in equal measure, expanding her musical world through collaborations with other artists, curators, and promoters. The results are commissioned works for festivals, museums, galleries, and particular occasions such as the state visit of Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark in Buenos Aires and Berlin. Her work has also appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Festival Música Estranha in Brazil, the DEIÀ International Music Festival in Spain, the Intonal Festival in Sweden, as well as in Denmark for the National Gallery, the Golden Days Festival, the Thorvaldsens Museum, and the UTZON Centre. 

Her larger works include Drei Bewegungen des Elektrischen Körpers (2021) for the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir, the Royal Danish Ballet with choreography by artistic director Nikolaj Hübbe, and the Royal Guard Orchestra which was commissioned and premiered in honour of HM the Queen of Denmark during her state visit to Berlin in November 2021. The chamber opera DrømmeDøden (2021) was performed in May and June 2022 at the Ny Opera (premiere), at the Skuespilhuset of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, and at the Folkoperan in Stockholm. I Walk I Bleed (2020/21) for 10 cellos premiered at Click Festival in 2020 and was shown again at Sort/Hvid Theater Copenhagen in 2021. Noli Turbare Circulos Meos was created for Esbjerg Ensemble in 2019, and EKKLESIATERION for solo cello and quadraphonic loudspeaker arrangement was presented at Roskilde Festival and Intonal Festival in Malmö in 2021. 

One of her latest projects sees Josefine collaborating with the Royal Ballet at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen - in the coming seasons she will be exploring and creating new music for the ballet there. She is also currently working on the cello concerto HANDS for Århus Sinfonietta, to be premiered at Symfonisk Sal in Aarhus at SPOT Festival in May 2023, the installation opera HJEM for Copenhagen Opera Festival 2023, and the gender-diverse opera EKKO in collaboration with Sort/Hvid Theater. 

Her album releases have received critical acclaim and awards, most recently including the Round Glass Music Award (USA) and the Danish Radio P2’s Listeners’ Prize. Her solo debut album, ATRIUM, was released on Dacapo Records in August 2022. She has received a number of awards for her work, most recently The Crown Prince Couple’s Cultural Stardust Award 2022, the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize 2021, and the Odd Fellow Lodge Scholarship 2021 and the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation Honorary Scholarship 2020. Josefine Opsahl has given lectures in Shanghai, at The Royal Danish Academy of Music and The Rhyhmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and The University of Copenhagen (DK). She studied classical and contemporary cello performance at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA and holds an Advanced Postgraduate Soloist degree in Contemporary Creative Art. Josefine collaborates with Edition Wilhelm Hansen for the publication of her works.

Season 2022/23

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