Torun Torbo
Historic transverse flutes
Storytelling in music
Through her work on stage and in front of the radio microphone, Torun Torbo has captivated her audience for several decades.
As one of Norway's very few flautists with an education within historical performance practice, Torun Torbo stands for the very best in quality and joy of communication.
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In her own projects, she chooses music and stories that are rooted in history but always relevant and catchy for contemporary people.
Bio
Torun Torbo (born 1974) has established himself as Norway's probably most active and in-demand performer of historical transverse flutes over the course of just over two decades. She has her education from The Norwegian Academy of Music in modern flute, then specialized studies in baroque flute in The Hague (NL) and baroque/classical/romantic flute in Brussels, with Barthold Kuijken. She won the NM for young soloists on modern flute, and on baroque flute she came top in the Halle International Traverso Competition in 2001. Torun Torbo can often be heard in ensembles such as Barokkanerne, Barokksolistene, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra (regular piccolo player in late classical works) , Concerto Copenhagen (regular substitute for solo flautist Katy Bircher), Oslo Circles and others. She is also active in several chamber music contexts, such as in the newly started Christiania Klangkollektiv.
In addition to her career as a flautist, she has a permanent job as a journalist at NRK radio, and there too, she has garnered great recognition. In 2011, she won the international radio award Prix Italia, for the radio version of Tonen i isen, which has now found its way to the stage. She is praised for her good storytelling style and warm radio voice.
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In the production series Flute Stories (Fløytefortellinger), she combines her work as a flautist with storytelling techniques to draw the audience into new experiences. The tone in the ice is one of three such, as of today. The other two are "The German Sappho" about a female poet in Enlightenment Berlin: how she wrote her way out of poverty, all the way to Berlin's intellectual circle and the court of the King of Prussia itself . The narration is accompanied by music by CPE Bach.
A little later comes the Flute Story Sorgenfri, about Frederick the Great of Prussia: About the young boy who really only wanted to play the flute but was tyrannized by a half-mad father. And when the boy grew up, he built the castle Sans Souci (Sorrow Free), where he could practice music with like-minded people. The music in this performance will be by himself, as well as his close friends Quantz, CPE Bach and his sister Wilhelmine.