Kongen Af Himmeby-Demo/Utopiaville-Demofor Symphony Orchestra (2009). The Utopiaville-Demo is commissioned by Finn Schumacker for The Odense Symphony Orchestra. Repertoire operas occationally have orchestral suites: Bits and pieces of overture interlude etc. tied up in a bouquet of 'schönste Tränen'. Contemporary opera usually wither after the first season so the focus is on getting people to come and have a sniff before it's too late. Consequently it seemed obvious to me to start making orchestral excerpts from my operas that are meant to be played before the premiere (and after please); I call them 'operatrailers' when they're substantial enough to be considered independent works and 'opera demos' when they're relatively short and more appetizer-ish. The Utopiaville-Demo is a fast-and-furious cinemascope 3D THX-demo for my chamber opera 'The King ofUtopiaville' which is sort of a mix between a reversed revolutionary opera (reversed because it's about a revolutionthat flops) and a rhythm'n blues theatre concert. The opera takes place on the remote tropical island of Honga-Tonga where a mayor form Europe is taking a much needed holiday as far away as possible from his home town Utopiaville. The mayor desperately needs to get away:He has overstepped his authority blatantly and broken every rule of law he felt like in order to create a modern liberalistic society where sanitation medicare hospitals schools the police and all other public institutions are sold to private investors and then leased back by the public - that way noone will ever have to pay taxes because everything finances itself the mayor says and in order to keep reality at a safe distance he drinks massive amounts of insanely expensive french claret all in the best interest of the inhabitants of Utopiaville of course.Honga Tonga can't get any further away from Waikiki Beach: It looks something like the 1933 version of

Poul Ruder's Wind-Drumming for Wind Quintet and 4 Percussionists (1979/85). Parts are for hire: hire@ewh.dk Programme NoteWind-Drumming was written in 1979 on a commission from The Danish Percussion Ensemble.The piece is a clash of two kinds of sound-associations; the mystic exotic impact of Latin-American drumming and the more well dressed reputation of Western concert-instruments in this case a wind-quintet (w. electric flute).The two instrumental camps either melt into one soft humming ritual or are split wide apart the winds tearing their way through the undergrowth ofrainforest-drumming. There is more than one way of getting on to WIND-DRUMMING: obviously it is about the confrontation of two incongruent ways of living a lament on the damage done to the tropical rainforests of the world by modern civilisation. One can hear it plainly as a direct rhythm-show a downright number or a joyous homage to the most exiting kind of folkloristic music at all: the carnal spell of the Brazilian Samba. Poul Ruders