In Superborea three traditions meet: a modern composition for baroque instruments, music from a baroque opera, and the language of modern dance. To make it a whole, lights, video projections and electronic sound design are added.
The components are a new composition by Juha T. Koskinen, a selection of dances and aria fragments from the opera Les Boréades by Jean-Philippe Rameau, and the dance of Janne Marja-aho, to the coreography of Kaisa Torkkel and Marja-aho himself. Everything Juha T. Koskinen has composed for this work is a dialogue with the music of Rameau; partly it still recognisable as baroque music, partly it has gone through a metamorphosis to 21st century musical language. The compilation and arrangement of Rameau´s music for an instrumental quartet have been made by the composer and the recorder player Pekka Silén. Also influences from Japanese traditional Nō theatre are to beheard.
In Superborea, the northern winds and storms rage. They also calm, to give way to elegant, boisterous, elegic and passionate dances and aria fragments performed by the dancer and the four musicians. The wildness, playfulness and passion of the dance finally give way to a solitary bass recorder player on the desolate scene.
Kimmo Karjunen creates the visual world with light design and video projections; and the sound design is completed by the electronic sounds of Jaakko Kulomaa.
The new composition by Juha T. Koskinen has been commissioned by Baroque Ensemble Cornucopia, aided by a grant from the Sibelius Fund of The Society of Finnish Composers.