On this Planet is a contemporary danish opera – a journey through life from birth to death. But it is no ordinary journey. It has been set to text and music by the composer Anders Nordentoft, it is performed by the musician Thomas Sandberg and Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen; on stage Martin Tulinius has created a unique unity of video, computer graphics, sound and light – just as the music mixes different genres. Anders Nordentoft’s past as a rock musician is combined with his classical training in a brand new musical universe where the concept of crossover is no longer adequate as a label.
Thomas Sandberg is well known in Scandinavia as an unusual mixture of performance artist, percussionist, clown and sound artist. Together with Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen he creates a symbiosis of the human voice and instrumental sound where texts by Anders Nordentoft and the West Indian poet Derek Walcott meet. With On This Planet we enter the same universe as Twin Peaks and Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, where anything can happen and nothing is what it seems. This suspense-filled universe is given musical nerve by Anders Nordentoft in a mixture of rock, jazz, blues and modern composition music. There are no borders On This Planet. Anything can happen.
The clip here is the piece Love after Love with text by Derek Walcott. Athelas is conducted by Morten Ryelund. It was premiered in November 2002 in Copenhagen and it is released on CD and DVD.