Recording from wednesday´s concert

Here you can listen to my entire program from wednesday´s concert:
www.akselkolstad.com/audio/music/logen

The recording was done by the magnificant tonemeister
Oscar André Lie Foss. Stay tuned for soon to come video-samples from the concert by the multimedia state of wonder Morgan Nicolaysen, who also took all of the photos from my previous blog.

"I love this game"

I had an amazeing audience yesterday at the wonderful Gamle Logen in Oslo, Norway. We hit it off from the first moment - and I´d love to take them out on another date sometime very soon <3

Ready, set, play!

Today I played through my solo-program in the wonderful concert hall at Gamle Logen, Oslo, where I will be performing on wednesday. I felt like on fire wearing the new Moods suit and Nike sneakers! And this concert hall is one of Norway´s oldest and finest! The famous Norwegian violinist Ole Bull once said it had one of the best acoustics he had ever heard. Jascha Heifetz and Vladimir Horowitz among other great legends, have also performed in this wonderful hall. So there lies an absolutely great atmosphere in the walls the audience can look forward to!

As I am on tour with "Kultur.Akershus" this month playing two or three concerts for school-children almost every morning, the days have been long and often very hard, but yet so very inspiering. Performing for children, and watching them respond to the music is priceless. And it is allways so very important to never let go of the child within one self! Especially when performing on stage. On wednesday I´ll be unleaching the child in my self, on stage - for you!



After the concert everybody´s invited for a drink at Engebret Café,
Oslo´s oldest restaurant, right next to the concert hall! We got our own space - and our own bar;) Hope to see you all there after the concert, too!

C u at Gamle Logen, wednesday 24th of March, at 7.30 pm :)

Resent prizes

"Scholarship from Tom Wilhelmsen Foundation"

Last December I was given a scholarship worth 30.000 NOK from the Tom Wilhelmsen Foundaiton in Norway to contribute to my work and studies in New York. I was of course is very extremely greatful for the scholarship and am so much looking forward to bring back more projects from the US to Norway as a result of the scholarship.

"Price of honor"



During the concert I hosted on January 3rd 2010 in Fredrikstad, I was awarded 30.000 NOK "for Kolstad´s extraordinary work for classical music in Norway" by Østfold Energy. The price was handed over completely by surprise! It came from out of the blue and the crowed seemed to like that:)

"Price of Honor - Østfold Energy Inc.´s price of honor for fine arts is given to Aksel Kolstad because of his
extraordinary work for classical music in Norway. The intention of giving the price is to stimulate and inspire the price-winner to achieve new artistic goals."

New moods and nikey´s for wednesday!

I just had to get a hold of this superfantastic new suit from Moods of Norway, and added a pair of supercool orange and white Nikey basketball shoes today. Putting on the basketball shoes brings back a lot of great memories from when my wonderful dad coached me many, many years ago. He was a wonderful coach, among so many other things! For those of you who didn´t know - he was actually the coach of Norway´s national team for many years. I want to bring the game back in to my life. Because I miss it a lot. So, I bring my game with me on stage...Game on! C u on court on wednesday;)

I love you dad!

A musical living statue.

Too cool for a tuxedo...

Concert in Cannes

Yesterday I landed in Nice, which was very nice, after a rather boring transit in Frankfurt (not the coolest place to be in the world of airports). But once I came to Nice my heart started to blossom! Man!! What a wonderful city!

I flew in with my very good friend and wonderful collegue, Bjarne Magnus Jensen (violin). And today we performed at the MIPIM International Congress in Cannes. We did some Halvorsen, Bull and Mozart´s supercool sonata in A major! After the gig Bjarne and I took a walk in the amazeingly huge congress hall and took a look at what it had to offer among all the men and women in black suits...I found a russian stand with an air-ballon that I liked very much...As well as another russian stand which represented the great castle in St.Petersburg, Tsarskoj Selo, where I performed a couple of years ago. I got a hold of some new contacts regarding future concerts in Tsarskoj Selo, looking forward to that!! I might actually perform there this June with some russian orchestra, performing Mozart and Gershwin concertos. Will keep you posted on that one:)

Heading back to Norway tomorrow - but not before hitting the nightclubs in Nice! Lunch in Monaco tomorrow of course....;)

Welcome to my solo recital!

I´d love you all to come and see my solo performance at
Gamle Logen in Oslo (Norway) on March 24th at 7.30 pm

I´ll be performing my newets works for piano
An evening with comedy and contemporary music!
This is the program:

La Follia
Variation on a theme by George Gershwin
Variation on a theme by Sergej Rachmaninov
5 surreal interpretations of 5 lyric pieces by Edvard Grieg
Harlekin-variations
5 Goldfish-preludes
Deux morceaux fantasque

Tickets: 200/150/100 NOK is sold in Gamle Logen (tlf: +47 22332266)
or can be ordered online at www.billettservice.no (tlf: +47 815 33 133)

Hope to see you there:)

Thank you Musikk-Huset A/S for your sponsorship!

Why is Harlekin crying - a post festival story

The circus is closed. Everybody went home. The streets are empty, and Harlekin has nowhere to go, his home has closed for the night. He strolls up the narrow streets, looking through window glasses. The rooms are all dark, everybody is a sleep. In the very end of the street lies a little café nobody goes to. Only Harlekin knows of it. He opens the café-door. A small candle is lit on one of the tables, next to a painting of Mona Lisa.

Harlekin smiles with tears in his eyes when he sees it. Mona Lisa knows Harlekin well. She likes when he comes to visit late at night. Next to Mona Lisa is an old piano. Harlekin sits down next to the piano and looks at the music lying on it. It´s the Goldberg-variations by Bach. Harlekin starts to cry. So does Mona Lisa. Halrekin starts to play. Then he looks at Mona Lisa and plays Bach the way she likes it.

Listen to Aksel Kolstad: Harlekins variations
http://www.cafedeconcert.no/mediacenter/audio/FESTIVAL09/Goldbergvariasjons.mp3
(Live from the Fredrikstad Café de Concert-festival 2009)

Dear friends, welcome to my blog!

Sincerely, Aksel Kolstad