Kongen Af Himmeby-Demo/Utopiaville-Demofor Symphony Orchestra (2009). The Utopiaville-Demo is commissioned by Finn Schumacker for The Odense Symphony Orchestra. Repertoire operas occationally have orchestral suites: Bits and pieces of overture interlude etc. tied up in a bouquet of 'schönste Tränen'. Contemporary opera usually wither after the first season so the focus is on getting people to come and have a sniff before it's too late. Consequently it seemed obvious to me to start making orchestral excerpts from my operas that are meant to be played before the premiere (and after please); I call them 'operatrailers' when they're substantial enough to be considered independent works and 'opera demos' when they're relatively short and more appetizer-ish. The Utopiaville-Demo is a fast-and-furious cinemascope 3D THX-demo for my chamber opera 'The King ofUtopiaville' which is sort of a mix between a reversed revolutionary opera (reversed because it's about a revolutionthat flops) and a rhythm'n blues theatre concert. The opera takes place on the remote tropical island of Honga-Tonga where a mayor form Europe is taking a much needed holiday as far away as possible from his home town Utopiaville. The mayor desperately needs to get away:He has overstepped his authority blatantly and broken every rule of law he felt like in order to create a modern liberalistic society where sanitation medicare hospitals schools the police and all other public institutions are sold to private investors and then leased back by the public - that way noone will ever have to pay taxes because everything finances itself the mayor says and in order to keep reality at a safe distance he drinks massive amounts of insanely expensive french claret all in the best interest of the inhabitants of Utopiaville of course.Honga Tonga can't get any further away from Waikiki Beach: It looks something like the 1933 version of

Stratifications was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 1973-75 and was premiered in the summer 1977 by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at the Young Nordic Music Festival in Reykjavik. Programme note: The stratifications referred to in the title unfold two different levels. There is the stratification of the time dimension produced by the opposition of contrasting parts; at the same time the polyphony the presence of several simultaneously sounding layers is of great importance to the music. By garish colours and clear-cut outlines a polyrhythmic simultaneousness of simple melodies is produced with more gestic music and othermaterial which give a peculiar ?set piece-like? effect in the sound picture. The ?new simplicity? details are here woven together in a new kind of complex whole. ?Stratifications? begins with a series of concretistic masklike ?pictures of the music?. It is like seeing lantern slides. But this ?fictive? form crackles and the music gets attentive and real. The music is in a night-mare condition where it is not getting anywhere in spite of a great dynamic display. But finally is liberating itself and rising ?in triumph?.