No limits - anything can happen!
On This Planet is 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 singer and performing artist Thomas Sandberg, and Martin Tulinius has created magnificent stage design with video, computer graphics, sound and light, where the genres are mixed just like the musical 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. On This Planet is a new kind of artistic idiom where a symbiosis of the human voice and instrumental sound is created - a tension-filled universe that is given musical backbone by Anders Nordentoft in a mixture of rock, jazz, blues and modern composition music.
In On This Planet we are in the same universe as in Twin Peaks and Kingdom Hospital, where anything can happen and nothing is what it seems. Thomas Sandberg is well known in Danish musical life as an unusual mixture of performance artist, percussionist, rock singer, clown and soundmaker. And that was exactly what Anders Nordentoft needed in the summer of 2000 when he launched the project that was to become On This Planet, written specifically for Thomas Sandberg and ATHELAS Sinfonietta Copenhagen. At that time it was just two songs with the joint title Too Much Sand. Later the number grew to six, performed in May 2001, now with the title On This Planet. By the time of the world premiere on 20th November it was 15 songs with texts by Anders Nordentoft and the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.
Anders Nordentoft's life-cycle narrative starts from darkness, inspired by the painter Kurt Trampedach and his interest in shamanism - ecstatic communication between this world and the supernatural world.
Marianne Klint