Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival is the foremost festival for contemporary music in Scandinavia. The 20th Ultima festival will take place 8th-18th September 2010. Protector of the festival is H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway.

Facts ‘09

8 out of 10 want to return
80 per cent of the respondents in the Ultima audience survey want to come back in 2010. The survey was conducted in October by marketing research company Synovate. A corresponding survey was conducted after the 2008 Ultima festival. The comparison showed, among other insights, that the average audience age was somewhat lower in 2009. Read more.

More than 11 000
11 200 people attended Ultima as audience, a bit more than 1000 a day. The audience number includes all productions, like concerts, musical theater, opera, exhibitions, club nights, dance, workshops, installations, composer talks and seminars during the 11 days the festival took place.

- We were aiming for an audience of 10 000, which we have achieved, notes festival director Lars Petter Hagen.

The need to take risks
The performance categories with the highest percentage of guests was “electronica, noise and improvisation” and “chamber and orchestra concerts”.

- When the soprano Silje Aker Johnsen had her solo concert at Litteraturhuset (house of literature), we were over capacity and could not let everybody that wanted to attend in. The festival has shown the diversity within the field of contemporary music and that audiences appreciate different kinds of productions, says Hagen.

The festival director also points out that venues without a steady number of seats had a high number of visitors. In the middle of the forest, Ultima arranged an open-air concert at Fagervann at 6.30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Despite the unusual timing, 100 people showed up.

- Some had stayed overnight in tents, others showed up at Jernbanetorget in central Oslo to ride on a free bus departing at 4.30 a.m. I hoped for fifty people, but feared that there would be even less. A festival like Ultima needs to take this kind of risks in programming, states Hagen.

50-50 men and women
A total of 131 artistic originators and 323 performers (not counting symphony and philharmonic orchestras) participated on Ultima 2009. 33.6 percent of the originatore were female, 66.4 percent male. Among the performers, there were almost full equality: 49.1 percent female and 50.1 percent male.

34 new works had its world premiere on Ultima. 22 of these were created by Norwegian composers.

Solid finances
In total, Ultima received 7.1 million Norwegian kroner from the Ministry of Culture and Oslo Municipality. Ultima has held the status of node institution since 2006, which means that government and municipal funding is guaranteed.

Ultima is organized as a non-profit foundation. The festival will have a profit of 150 000 Norwegian kroner this year, as originally outlined in the budget.

More infos: http://www.ultima.no/

Foto: Bach Measures, Rune Kongsro

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