The performances of multiartist and guitarist Daniel Meyer  Grønvold strike me as ideal projections of musical and physical presence. What he plays is secondary compared to how it  is played. Woven into All Play are transcriptions of Grønvold’s improvisations, creating tension between this reproduced material and the actual fact of performance. Through this translation,  meaning is lost, but at the same time something else is illuminated. All Play is designed as a scene, a short concerto-genre work  in which a prerecorded video of Grønvold’s playing is treated as  the soloist and the quintet as the orchestra. In recent years I have  expanded All Play into a series of pieces for different ensembles. In  these pieces, a significant influence has been Alvin Lucier’s installation Empty Vessels, prompting me to think about musicians’ reactions as part of the composition. I am particularly drawn to and  fascinated by the phenomenon of feedback, which makes me ask:  what is play? The starting point for the All Play series is the electric  guitar (because it was my own musical starting point)—not only  as an instrument on stage, but also as my reaction to the experience formed by playing this clumsy, noisy and inviting instrument.

Jan Martin Smørdal