Mattias Hållsten

Mattias Hållsten is a Swedish composer and musician. His music has a special focus on precise intonation and the ways harmonicity can be manifested in the listening experience, realised in improvised, notated as well as recorded musical contexts.

In addition to previous studies in composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Hållsten is studying shō for Ko Ishikawa. He is also composing solo music for the instrument, which he has performed across Europe, and plays in ensembles for improvised and contemporary music. He is since 2023 a member of the Kamigaku Ensemble, initiated by the late CC Hennix, with selected performances at Munch Museum, Oslo; Performance Space New York, NYC; and La Biennale Musica, Venice. Additionally, Hållsten has an ongoing collaboration with the groundbreaking Swedish butoh-artist SU-EN.

Hållsten released the album Breathing, bowing (2023) on the Stockholm-based label Thanatosis, which included music for viola da gamba and shō. The album was nominated in the category "Best experimental music" at Manifestgalan 2024.

For his concert in Mimerlaven, Mattias Hållsten will present parts of a new work, featuring pitch-shifted recordings of the separate shō pipes played alongside the live shō, which expands the potential harmonic space of the instrument into extended Just Intonation harmony. This re-contextualisation of the sound of the instrument allows for an exploration of yet unheard sonorities, harmonic movement and phenomenological potential.