Restart/Reshape/Reveal (2024)

Stavanger Symphony Orchestra has commissioned a work on the occasion of the city of Stavanger's 900th anniversary. The remarkable thing about this city is its incredible ability to lead and guide through many different eras of growth, decline, and change. I have been inspired by Stavanger's constant development and rebooting in this work. After shipping and herring export, the most critical industry for the town's development until oil entered was canning.

The canning industry in Stavanger created new growth and activity in the city after the economic crisis in the 1880s, when large and well-known trading houses and shipping companies went bankrupt. The era of the canning industry lasted 109 years, from 1873, when the first factory was established, to 1982, when the last one was closed. In the most active period, Stavanger had approximately 350 canning factories.

The canning era started the year Rachmaninov was born - and ended the year I was born. In music history, it is exciting to think about which parallel processes coincide in time. I was born into a different reality than Rachmaninov. The canning industry was one of the first industrial workplaces in Stavanger where women could get a job. When fish balls were produced in tins in the 1880s, it was a high-level handiwork - carried out by ladies.

In my work for Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, I work with rearrangement, needlework, reshaping, and restarts. Every new start reveals new material and new possibilities.

- Therese Ulvo