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Information and sign up form to The Nacademy, 21st-26th of July 2025

Would you be interested in participating in a summer course in improvisation with improvisers and composers from the younger generation as teachers? The Nakama Collective invites you to The Nacademy – an alternative and wholesome experience of working with improvised and composed music on the participants own premises.

About The Nacademy

The Nacademy is a project which springs our from the record company Nakama Records and the band Nakama. Both are built on the idea that music should be a collective process, both in preparations and execution and that music can entail so much more than just sound. Music is a social organism, a way of life and for some a life view or philosophy. The music of The Nacademy is about co-operation, sharing experiences and tasks together, building each other strong and — hopefully — make the world a better place! We wish to be a healthy counterweight to the more traditional approach to jazz and improvisation. Having said that - we don’t discard any method, theory or concept. All approaches has the potential to create fantastic music!

The Nacademy’s goal is to give the participants a taste of how music – both improvised and composed – can be accessed creatively in both theory and in execution. The course is set to inspire an undogmatic approach to what music can be and how it can be made. We pay attention to what the students themselves want to learn, and the course plan is flexible in order to meet the participants wishes and needs.

The main focus of the course is interplay and working with repertoire that the teacher’s prepare in advance. This repertoire can be anything from thoroughly composed pieces to drafts and small ideas, and reflects the course’s overall goal of giving the participants a taste of different ways of creating music. The participants will work together in one big group.

In addition to the interplay-classes, the participants will get one-to-one lessons with all of teachers. We’ve also been giving lectures about topics such as:

– Music as magic; its transcendental function
– AACM and the potential in musical collectives
– Sensation of Tone; Herman von Helmholtz’ groundbreaking book from 1863
– Music between the keys; an introduction to overtones
– Usage of polyrythms in free music

The course this year is being held at Sunnhordland Folkehøgskole which is located in Kvinnherad kommune. Both participants and teachers will live, work and play together. On the last day of the course the students will play a concert for the instructors.

Feedback from previous years:

“You are all great individuals and pulling this thing together – I’m super impressed! It was wonderful being a participant”

“The mix was great - 360 degree exposure, the participants got to hang with each instructor thus had been exposed to variety of approaches - this is definitely a keeper going forward in my opinion”

“Lectures were highly informative, well presented and digestible. You are a very well articulated bunch”

“I hope the Nacademy can continue… I learned a lot, and was truly inspired!”

www.nakamarecords.no
www.facebook.com/nakamaband

Schedule*

Monday
18:00 – Arrival, dinner, social. Mini concert with teachers

Tuesday - Thursday
08:00 – Breakfast
09:00 – Interplay, band
11:30 – Teacher’s hour: theory/history
12:30 – Lunch, break
13:30 – One-on-one + free time
14:30 – Teacher’s hour: listening
15:30 – Dinner, free time
17:30 – Interplay, band
19:30 – Supper

Friday
08:00 – Breakfast
09:00 – Interplay, band
12:30 – Lunch, break
13:30 – One-on-one + free time
14:30 – Teacher’s hour: listening
15:30 – Dinner, free time
17:30 – Interplay, band
19:00 – Participants play a concert for the teachers
21:00 – We rig down, hang out, also possible to leave if you have to

Saturday
08:00 – Breakfast
09:00 – Clean up, wrap up, bye bye!

* Changes might occur

Sign-up and payment

The course cost is NOK 3500 and is payed to 9001.24.73361
Food and lodging is included in the price
For international transactions:
IBAN: NO8990012473361
BIC/SWIFT: SHEDNO22
Don’t pay before your place at the course is confirmed!
Please mark payment with your name

Sign-up form on the bottom of this page.

Teachers

Andreas Røysum (b. 1991)
Andreas Røysum is a clarinet player, composer and curator and organizer living in Numedal. Improvisation is the cornerstone in is musicianship and essential in the music he himself loves, be it free jazz, Indian classical music, Balenese gamelan, Maroccon trance music or Norwegian folk music. You can hear him with Miman, Marthe Lea Band, Andreas Røysum Ensemble and Nakama among others. Since 2015 he has organized the Motvind-festival, both in Oslo and in recent time also in Rollag.

Ayumi Tanaka (b. 1986)
Ayumi Tanaka is a Japanese pianist, composer and improviser living in Norway. She leads her own trio together with drummer Per Oddvar Johansen and fellow Nakama-member Christian Meaas Svendsen on bass. Her curiosity about the possibilities of combining ideas from different styles of music and thoughts make her music unique and fresh in an organic way. Attracted by the communicative powers of music, her motivation for creating music is to open the listener’s heart, and create a space which is free from ethnicity, culture and history.

Andreas Wildhagen (b. 1988)
Andreas can be summed up as an open-minded and flexible musician. The projects he is involved with display a wide range of musical and dynamic output: Intricate improvisations with Lana trio, extreme bursts of energy in Paal Nilssen-Love's Large Unit or beat oriented modern jazz with Mopti and Bendik Baksaas. To Andreas, diversity has never been a goal in itself, however the urge to explore new areas of music has always been there. Because creativity and intuition is always flowing and moving, never stopping in one place, it is the same way with the music he plays.

Christian Meaas Svendsen (b. 1988)
Christian is first and foremost a bass player, but he also runs a record label, a concert series, a festival and works with cover design from time to time. Known through bands such as Mopti, Duplex, Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit og The Big Yes! – to mention a few. His main project is his own band Nakama. With these projects he has played concerts on all continents. As a bass player he is diverse, but his main focus is to find new ways of playing his instrument using all of his body, bows and the bass as the framework.

Previous and parked teachers

Georgia Wartel Collins (b. 1995)
Georgia Wartel Collins is a Swedish double bass player based in Norway. Jazz and improvisation has always been a strong life force for Georgia with both her parents active in the jazz and performance-art scenes. Georgia and her double bass found one another and entered a passionate, complex and long lasting relationship, developing a movement based approach to playing. Her vast explorations of the bass are always in motion. Georgia graduated from the Conservatory in Trondheim 2019 and received her Masters degree from Conservatorium van Amsterdam 2022. We know her well from bands like Juno and her own Aila Trio, and is often seemed as a key figure in inter-disciplineray settings with dance and/or theatre.

Paal Nilssen-Love (b. 1974)
Paal has been the world’s energy reservoir for the past 25 years or so. His list of collaboration could easily fill up a medium sized book, and the next couple of volumes are in the making. In addition to a vast array of ad hoc collaboration he has been a part of long standing projects such as Atomic and The Thing. In recent years we also know him from his own Large Unit and Circus, both of which have had several releases on his own label. Paal is known as a high energetic drummer, active listener and a generous human being.

Kjetil Jerve (b. 1988)
Kjetil Jerve was born and raised in Ålesund, before embarking on the jazz departments at Inderøy, Trondheim, and Oslo. After finishing his joint master’s degree with Andreas Wildhagen in 2014 he has actively been freelancing in a broad spectrum of improvisation as a method for life and music. He has worked with several constellations, many of which go back all the way to his time as a student. He is one of the few Norwegian pianists who freely express himself within both abstract, mainstream, and electronic musical forms. One of his central mottos is to “expand the comfort zone”. In 2019 he became father to triplets, which in cohorts with the lockdowns extended his focus further towards DIY and his label Dugnad rec.

Sunnhordland Folkehøgskole

Our previous editions have been at Flerbruket outside of Oslo. This year we wanted to try a different location. Sunnhordland Folkehøgskole is located at Halsnøy in Kvinnherad kommune. The scenery is stunning and the facilities perfect for what we will do during the week. Participants and instructors alike will be divided between two houses. Everyone gets a single room whereas toilet and bath is shared on each house. The school is closed during our stay, so there won’t be any interference from other people.

Getting there isn’t as hard as it might look. There are daily boats going from Bergen airport and Bergen. There’s an express bus going from Oslo and which will take you all the way to Halsnøy. It’s also possible to take a train from Bergen, and then bus or boat from there. If you have questions regarding logistics, let us know and we’ll figure something out!

More info about Sunnhordland Folkehøgskole
https://www.sunnfolk.no/