Biography
Composer Rolf Wallin merges systematic procedures like fractal patterning with spontaneous imaginative impulses, and a number of his pieces incorporate performance-art dimensions. Born in Oslo on September 7, 1957, he trained locally under Finn Mortensen and Olav Anton Thommessen before continuing at the University of California, where Roger Reynolds and Vinko Globokar served as his chief mentors; earlier, jazz and avant-garde rock had already left their mark on his musical outlook. His breakthrough arrived in 1987 with the mezzo-soprano-and-piano work …though what made it has gone, drawn from an Osip Mandelstam poem; fusing concepts from Ligeti and Messiaen with novel procedures, the score earned a Norwegian Society of Composers Award. The Cikada Ensemble recorded it in 1992, after which Wallin’s music gained wider circulation through additional performances and releases, some beyond Norway.
In 1991 he devised his crystal-chord method, whereby three intervals recur within a crystalline fabric, yielding what he terms consonant atonality. Fractals and further computer-derived processes also appear, placed in deliberate tension with more unrestricted gestures. By the close of the decade he was extending these tools to broader canvases; his Clarinet Concerto received the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1998. Occasional scores introduce performance-art components, among them Strange News (2007), honored with the Edvard Prize, which employed electronics to examine the deployment of child soldiers in Uganda and Congo, although the bulk of his catalog remains scored for conventional acoustic instruments. In subsequent years Wallin adopted a looser handling of the crystal chords and allied mathematical devices. He composed the opera Elysium, which received its premiere in Oslo in 2016. His violin concerto Whirld, written in 2018, appeared on an Ondine album of his music released in 2024, by which point more than thirty of his works had been committed to disc.
In 1991 he devised his crystal-chord method, whereby three intervals recur within a crystalline fabric, yielding what he terms consonant atonality. Fractals and further computer-derived processes also appear, placed in deliberate tension with more unrestricted gestures. By the close of the decade he was extending these tools to broader canvases; his Clarinet Concerto received the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1998. Occasional scores introduce performance-art components, among them Strange News (2007), honored with the Edvard Prize, which employed electronics to examine the deployment of child soldiers in Uganda and Congo, although the bulk of his catalog remains scored for conventional acoustic instruments. In subsequent years Wallin adopted a looser handling of the crystal chords and allied mathematical devices. He composed the opera Elysium, which received its premiere in Oslo in 2016. His violin concerto Whirld, written in 2018, appeared on an Ondine album of his music released in 2024, by which point more than thirty of his works had been committed to disc.
Albums
Singles
