A Journey of Artistic Discovery Across Europe
IN SITU: Ultima Pavilion – Music, installations and other activities
Organised by Ultima, Norway
Music at the heart of the city
During Ultima 2025, a temporary music pavilion will be installed at Tigerplassen, next to Oslo Central Station. The Ultima Pavilion will serve as a gathering point for listening experiences, encounters, and musical surprises. Here, you can get up close to composers, musicians, and artists at work. You might hear something you have never heard before - or even become part of it yourself.
The pavilion will be open every day for ten days, presenting short concerts, installations, talks, and activities for both children and adults - programmed and performed by emerging musicians. You can drop by on your way to the train, during your lunch break, or seek it out as part of the festival programme.
The music you encounter will be both composed and improvised, but never detached. It emerges in dialogue with the city’s life, sounds, and rhythms, with you as a listener.
This is a place for experimentation, reflection, curiosity, and a sense of welcome regardless of your experience. A place that accommodates intimacy and distance, silence and noise. And a place with memory: each day leaves its trace, and the sounds that accumulate in the pavilion return in a new form on the final day.
The programme spans ten days and includes short concerts, sound installations, conversations, and interactive elements for both seasoned festival goers and curious passers-by. Each day has its own focus, with different artists, themes, and expressions. Sunday 14/9 is dedicated to activities for children.
Seven young curators, all musicians and composers, have developed the pavilion’s programme in collaboration with music students and staff from the Norwegian Academy of Music.
The pavilion is built by Circular Prototyping students from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, with reused materials and following principles of circular and sustainable architecture – in line with the Oslo Architecture Triennale’s motto, “What if nature comes first?”
A small coffee corner invites you to sit down, take a break, and make new friends.
More details will be published throughout September. Stay tuned!
Programme activities includes:
- 12 September: Stafett / Relay «echoes»
Ever wondered what your music sounds like when it comes back to you in a new shape? A live performance is recorded and immediately “echoed”—twisted through electronics or transformed by improvisation. Bring a piece from your repertoire, or join in with live electronics to reshape it on the spot. - 13 September: Speed Dating
Meet another musician on stage for the very first time and improvise together. You will be partnered with another musician to create a spontaneous performance! - 17 September: Improkappleik
Open to vocalists and instrumentalists on both familiar and unfamiliar instruments, in any genre. First, a slip of paper is drawn to decide the ensemble size, from solo to quintet. Then names are selected to fill the spots, followed by a theme or word given as the basis for free improvisation. No preparation, no time to think: straight onto the stage! - 19 September: Impro Marathon
An ongoing five-hour improvisation, open to everyone. Performers and audience may step in and out freely, to listen or to play. Extended techniques, risky phrasings. Everything is allowed, except what you thought was allowed before. - A Day of Drones
Join fellow musicians to create Oslo’s longest continuous drone. Date yet to be confirmed but express your interest! - Interact with Composers
Want to meet your audience up close? Join us in the pavilion, where visitors can ask you questions, request instant mini-compositions, or simply experience the fascination of being close to a composer at work. Date yet to be confirmed but express your interest!
Curators: Børge Furnes; Wei Ting Tseng; Fredrik Stanghov; Giuseppe Pisano-Riise; Saimi Ester Kortelainen; Wouter Torrenga; Ferdinand Schwarz
Read more at ultima.no
