Musicians without borders

We spoke with three of them – all presenting concerts this autumn. Wouter Torringa and Soohyun April Jang both have backgrounds as jazz violinists, while Olaf Andreas Strand has studied classical piano.

Dutch-born Wouter’s project focuses on the relationship between performer and audience – an angle that naturally leads to trying out new ways of experiencing music.

"I work a lot with placing the performance around the audience, so the audience is really submerged into the sounds," he explains.

At the same time, he is working on blending jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary classical music into a coherent whole. He describes it as crossing bridges between different worlds.

April from South Korea has taken her project even further. She works with sounds from the universe, exploring frequencies from space that she translates into sound and uses as the basis for contemporary music.

She already holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in jazz violin, but at FRIMA, the boundaries between genres are absent. She calls that a blessing – and says the programme gave her the chance to keep developing her own project.

"My previous master’s project was about textural improvisation of nature sounds. So, I kind of expand my view to another chapter, which is contemporary compositions about the universe, and include a lot of new textural interesting sounds," she explains.

Personality

Olaf, from Mo i Rana, is looking inward as a performer in search of the best way to convey music. Music history plays a curcial role in his project, and he believes music should always be personal and carry its own expression – even when working with centuries-old, well-established repertoire.

"I’ve been working with this, not as a foreign object from far away in the past that I can reconstruct, but as something I really can dive into for self-development."

Like the others, he is also working with his own material, experimenting with ways of blending Renaissance music with rhythmic music and improvisation.

"Improvisation is kind of key when you talk about personal music making", he adds.

Looking further

April believes FRIMA is ideal for musicians who don’t feel at home within established frameworks – something she has experienced herself as a jazz violinist.

"I feel much freer about how I want to study, how to approach and expand my perspective and my results," she says."

"It’s the perfect environment to dive deeply into the things I want to explore, without being bound by genres."

Wouter has the same experience:

"I never really fit into one box, so I was looking for a master’s where you can follow your own path. And there are not many masters in Europe who have that."

"I felt an urge to do more creative music making," says Olaf. "But I wanted to keep playing early music and classical. I felt like I should use what I have in new ways. FRIMA has allowed me to change my perspective, although I’m still working in the same genre."

Freedom does come with a certain responsibility, Wouter points out.

"It can be very challenging to be responsible for what you want to learn. But I think it’s so valuable to question yourself every day and create your own language. I think that’s also what the environment needs – people who look further than what is already there."

Differences as a common ground

What is it like to be part of such a diverse programme? Wouter says the feedback from fellow students is valuable for shifting his perspective beyond his own bubble.

"Also, it’s super interesting to give feedback on things you don’t know so much about, or you have another way of working with it. Sharing that can really open you up to how you listen and how you develop."

Olaf elaborates:

"Since FRIMA is not genre specific, you really have to think about what you’re doing and why you are doing it; you can’t just say 'this is how it’s done'."

NMH students are generally open-minded, and April says that students from other programmes are often curious about the FRIMA projects. She often participates in both classical and jazz-related projects.

"That change of direction also affects my own project a lot – the process and their way of working – and if I can learn from that journey.

Do the FRIMA students mostly have common ground or major differences?

"I think we’re mostly doing different things, but that just makes it even more interesting to see what we have in common," Olaf says.

"The common ground is that we are all researching our own passion," Wouter adds.

Possibilities and expression

April has already given one concert: in late September, she performed her own music from the 2019 album Inscape, together with a string quartet and band. Nordic nature was a major source of inspiration in that case. In June 2026, audiences will get to hear the results of her current project Woozoo – Interstellar Voyage, which is still in progress.

Wouter is inviting audiences to two concerts this autumn: firstly, on 7 October with his own trio of violin, piano, and percussion, where improvisation and extended techniques are essential. On 29 October, he will present a direct outcome of his FRIMA project, featuring performers moving freely among the audience alongside video projection. Although he has written the music for both events, he describes them as belonging to very different sonic worlds.

Olaf's concert will be pure improvisation rooted in different musical languages. He will play completely alone, and says his plan is to “trust fate” and perform whatever emerges in the moment.

"Nowhere to hide", he jokes.

Next spring, the FRIMA class is planning a joint concert. The programme isn’t set yet, but as Wouter sums it up:

"I think it will be a surprising event where there will be a lot of different things to experience, where you can see all the possibilities and different ways of expression."