Reviews
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I have seen Michael Hope perform his works before, and heavy thoughts lie behind the madness. Thoughts about what a composer should do, how he can function in society, how we should contend with the individual, beauty, and art. Hope’s objective is not to answer, but to elucidate the entire issue - with the help of the works of art that he himself performs. The composer’s father and mother were brought up onto the stage. Every effort was made to make us love the desperate artist. The entire work, entitled ‘(I Love You) for Instrumental Reasons’, was a brilliant reflection on what it is that Michael Hope has been educated in at the conservatory. Now he is a fully-fledged composer, and we can look forward to more questions than answers from him.
Thomas Michelsen in a 6 star review of '(I Love You) For Instrumental Reasons' for POLITIKEN (Original Article in Danish)
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…he is one of the most visionary and talented young composers I have met…Michael’s works are totally unique, and he has positioned himself as an absolute figurehead among the young composers not just here in Denmark but also internationally. In his works he consistently challenges conventional artistic limits, forms and expectations in an intense, touching and original way…Michael’s compositions demonstrate a masterly balance between meticulously formed structures and liberated formal experiments, and his dedicated interest and curiosity in terms of research and intellectual rigour results in a rare ability to blend seemingly ‘unmusical’ elements into a captivating musical world that is completely his own.
Recommendation from Bent Sørensen (Translated from Danish)
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Much more spectacular was Michael Hope's debut concert ‘(I Love You) For Instrumental Reasons’. Loaded to the brim with content, yet pleasantly structured - with clear segments and references to the academic tradition. The entire performance essentially comprised pages from the composer's diary, so personal as to be on the edge of the listener's comfort zone, yet at the same time clearly theatrical. A huge spectrum of emotions, from rage to sadness, joy and jokes, to a proud and affectionate reunion with his parents. One may wonder if there is still a place for composers screaming from the stage, full of frustration at the conditions of the art world - I think so, as much as possible, if it is true (or at least indistinguishable from the truth)…A chaotic but truthful composer, he confessed both his darkest thoughts and greatest hopes…The composer has succeeded in something extremely difficult with a large accumulation of content - the piece is etched in my memory and I am still able to reconstruct its progression and the emotions that accompanied me…I recommend keeping an eye on Michael Hope and following his career.
Joanna Kwapień on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music for GLISSANDO (Original Article in Polish)
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What one can sometimes miss in this environment - that I myself have traversed for the last ten years - is that the works are not only spectacular, but also have musical depth. It is this which sets apart the good idea from the good work. And it was this balance that the young English composer Michael Hope found to a near-genius degree, when he held his debut concert from The Royal Danish Academy of Music as part of MINU Festival. Hope…performed an hour-long tirade during the concert, which consisted of the work (I Love You) for Instrumental Reasons, specially written for the occasion. While seven musicians on stage rehearsed modernist clichés…more performers entered the stage: the Knight and Death from The Seventh Seal sat in a corner and played chess; three men in animal masks had a heated conversation about sugar-free cola, for or against; and finally, Hope summoned his English mother and father to teach the inept musicians how to play their instruments properly…Gradually, the spoken word - a satire on our podcast society - turned into music, as the musicians and talking animals played against each other, each with their own version of virtuoso nonsense. The result: a sublimely constructed cacophony that on the surface resembled a critique, but in reality was a defence - both of classical music as an institution and the musicality of setting it on fire.
Sune Anderberg on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2024 for WEEKENDAVISEN (Original Article in Danish)
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…Wednesday’s breathtaking debut concert with the British composer Michael Hope. The work, entitled (I Love You) For Instrumental Reasons, is primarily concerned with what it means to be a debuting composer - a theme, which Hope explores in a little over an hour of dismantling the debut concert, the compositional process, and the concert format…he goes berserk - completely ad absurdum in a stand-up-speed monologue on just about everything related to a debut concert. It is delivered with absolutely unbelievable precision, and he doesn’t stumble over a single word. At the same time it’s so utterly overwhelming that at one point I have to briefly give up. Only to return to a string of reflections on the insecurity of the individual, the fragility of the debutant, and Hope’s despair that he just wants to be loved…Finally, we are all invited up onto the stage, while Hope continues to talk, now without microphone. He asks us to talk to whomever each of us is standing next to…at one point there is some scattered applause. But people are also in the midst of conversations around the stage, which right now feels more important than clapping. So there is no real ending, and we each take the concert and our wonderment about what has just happened to us out into the evening. As I walk home, I think that there is hope for future debutants, for their scene, their festival organisers, their audiences - perhaps even for their reviewers - if we can take this open attitude, presence, conversation, and invitation to think about works with us out into the world.
Rasmus Holmboe on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2024 for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)
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(I Love You) for Instrumental Reasons was an incredibly high-risk piece that pushed the alienation techniques of new music composition, epic theatre and its descendants in the world of stand-up comedy, like Stewart Lee, to a limit. However, in the context of metamodern art practice, Hope’s blurring of irony and sincerity did land on the side of producing a genuine moment of connection in an incredibly innovative way…Hope’s work presented an intensely personal admission, from the persona of an experimental composer, of institutionalisation…The piece’s final gesture, Hope’s disappearance into the crowd, should not be read as deferring to the people in some kind of trivial affirmation of democracy in art. It is rather a way to highlight the complex ethical relationships that exist in institutionalised aesthetic experiences. In the end, we didn’t need him but we could consent to let him bring us together.
Macon Holt on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2024 for PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE (Original Article in English)
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At the end of the performance, when Hope stands in the audience gallery and yells at the ensemble, whose members in the meantime have all donned larger-than-life cardboard masks of his own face, it becomes clear that this is self-abuse in the form of an exuberant swan song to the role of the composer. The text slowly oscillates between narcissistic self-aggrandising and the will to progress, emancipatory desire and the need for love, which produces an astonishing emotional impact.
Jonas Harksen on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2024 for POSITIONEN (Original Article in German)
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Michael Hope turned the entire composer role on its head….(he) constantly asks questions of both his audience and his musicians…There is no doubt that this young artist has a mission and a vision of what he wants to do.
Rasmus Zwicki and Rune Glerup, Statement regarding Michael Hope's debut concert
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Dylan Richards and Michael Hope's bombastic joint work worked best, in which Richards' characteristic digital vomit was juxtaposed with Hope, who emulated an increasingly inept hype man. What wonderful chaos.
Jakob Gustav Winckler on SPOR Festival 2024 for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)
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But the really big festival experience was Current Resonance, with whom I began this article. The five works on the quartet’s programme - with Hope’s À la carte as the last - seemed incredibly well chosen, and rarely have I experienced such perfectly executed new music. It’s a mystery to me how the ensemble could succeed in activating the entire range of emotions with such a mundane theme as food…I managed to be baffled, irritated, moved, nauseous, overwhelmed. But most importantly, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face after the concert. It was a rollercoaster ride that tickled in all the right places. One rarely gets the chance to enjoy a concert experience like this in Denmark.
Jakob Gustav Winckler on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2023 for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)
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Similarly, the closing performance of Hope’s “Á la carte” saw the ensemble perform in gender-confounding costumes that refused to settle into a binary as they sat down for dinner, caught in the multilayered subjective realities of the moment. Between incidental sounds of culinary consumption, snippets of big band jazz, sound design, dialogue and noise, Hope had staged and composed the ruptures we live with even when we just share a meal with a friend/lover/enemy/parent/partner/associate and the struggle we feel to keep it all together – all the while questioning if we should. By the end, the stage and the performers were covered in cake and there was a remarkable feeling of levity in the room which is rare in contemporary music festivals.
Macon Holt on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2023 for PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE (Original Article in English)
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Four men in dresses and fishnet tights set a long table. The velvet tablecloth is red, candlesticks are placed on the table. The solemn organ and the detective jazz on the sound system portend an ill fate for the variegated dinner party. Is this their Last Supper?
They have the strangest way of communicating with each other; they don't talk at the table, but furiously write letters with quills and take turns gesturing excessively. There's something Chaplinesque about the pantomime comedy, I think in my bewildered attempt to place the mystery of a work Michael Hope has written for his composer ensemble Current Resonance - the very last piece at MINU festival in Copenhagen. Suddenly the lights go out, a scream resounds from the speakers. A crime has taken place.
Now the lights in the dark auditorium flash with a stamping sound that catches the ensemble red-handed in various incriminating photographs. A smile spreads across my lips. What kind of obscure Cluedo aesthetic are we witnessing? Finally, the ensemble is back at the table and the lighting has changed to the red glow of the darkroom. The strobe-laden finale leaves me with a dizzying doubt as to whether the piece was actually a murder scene that unfolded or the evidence from it. Either way, it was hilarious!
À la carte (2023) ended MINU with a bang. There was something refreshingly brash about the work’s propensity for big theatrical effects, Sherlock Holmes and ribald slapstick humour. A fitting end to a festival where comedic strategies played an enormous role.
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Jakob Gustav Winckler on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2023 for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)
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What’s another common thread to many performances at MINU is their surreal storytelling, which is at its height during À la carte performed by Current Resonance (already known in Poland from Elementi). This international collective, established during study time in Århus, programs its concerts usually around certain topics – and this time it was Michael Hope who assembled pieces on dining, including writing his own. In many moments I felt like [I was] entrapped inside a Buñuel or Lynch movie, with all its claustrophobic atmosphere and nowhere to escape.
Jan Topolski on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2023 for GLISSANDO (Original Article in English)
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There used to be a website called 'Cute Overload' where one could experience a full overdose of cute animal photos. Composer-performer Michael Hope has probably spent a bit too much time on there over the years. In his performance NICE FACE he comments on an endless stream of cute animal images, whether it’s an ant, a raccoon, a bumblebee or a cat. He shouts the name of the animal, if google translate is right, in Japanese, and then comments 'Cute'. He gesticulates wildly, accompanied by violent electronic sounds; that too is an aspect of cuteness - 'Cute Aggression' - cute creatures can sometimes be pretty mean…Or like when one eats too many sweets; the hangover comes, the stomach rebels, and isn’t nice about it. I have to admit that I personally have little contact with the conventional kawaii aesthetic; I was a bit too old for the Pokémon hype. But I find it all the more exciting when this kawaii encounters its opposite. When this innocent childishness collides with brutality…
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Clemens K. Thomas & Friedemann Dupelius on NICE FACE for WDR 3 STUDIO NEUE MUSIK (Original Broadcast in German)
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A conductor has taken off his jacket. He's wearing pink knitted gloves and is in the process of smearing popcorn on his face. The man is in fact performer Michael Hope, a composer who works far from old-fashioned sheet music. Hope explores sound, music and roles in the music world in his performances. I loved his piece about classical concert pianists and the way they mimic the extreme emotions of piano concertos like Rachmaninov's and Tchaikovsky's with their body language while playing. The work was performed earlier this year at the Royal Danish Academy of Music's Pulsar festival. In The Black Diamond on Thursday night, Hope embarked on a new performance; 'How Not to Shout' was the rather cool title, this time inspired by the fact that in a place like the Royal Library, you are expected not to make noise. Hope was on the floor with a conductor's baton and microphone, while doing his best to keep his voice down…he again showed his willingness to expose and poke fun by exploring music as broadly as possible. As sound. Or the absence of sound. But also as stage performance and as everything that is outside of sound in the creation of classical music.
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Thomas Michelsen on Klang Festival 2023 for POLITIKEN (Original Article in Danish)
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A totally unfounded fear, as Michael Hope in particular proved over the coming days. A charming cross between Simon Steen-Andersen and Victor Borge, he put comic ingenuity at the top of the festival's agenda…with the performance Born/Again, in which a video illustrated the similarity between piano virtuosos' mimicry and Hollywood renderings of Christ on the cross. Behind the grand piano, Hope himself mimed along after painstakingly donning a tuxedo, before finally - based on the maxim ‘laughter and a tear’ - hitting the keys himself as a touching, romantic virtuoso.
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Sune Anderberg for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)
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The unexpected collaboration between electronic duo Pamela Angela and performance ensemble Current Resonance, for example, was a highlight. The way the gentle textures of Current Resonance's piano and clarinet weaved in and out of Pamela Angela's extremely synthetic universe of glitching electronics and autotuned vocals was powerful in its slightly uncertain, constantly shifting atmosphere, suggesting that this was not a seamlessly fused assimilation of two very different aesthetics, but rather that the two were interested in exploring the differences between them, drawing each other into the deep end.
Rasmus Weirup on MINU_festival_for_expanded_music 2022 for SEISMOGRAF (Original Article in Danish)