Malin K

I was born 1972 in Oslo, Norway, but grew up in Kongsvinger, a town near the swedish border. (Since 1995, I’ve been back in Oslo.) I have always drawn and written, and the first time I sat words to an instrumental song I was 9 years old.  My works transcends both genre and materials. Text in various forms is also a red thread in many of my visual works. I have had exhibitions of visual art both in Germany and in Norway. In recent years I have concentrated on work with text for music, both art music and rhythmic music, as well as poetry and other types of literary text. I wrote the libretto for Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen’s opera «Gespenster«, which premieres on the main scene in Meiningen, Germany in May 2020.

I am concerned with everything human. And my works often explore contrasts: the light and the dark, the life and death, the decay and renewal, the sadness and the joy – the contradictory, yet belonging. My life has been anything but easy. I have had multiple serious health issues, but somehow always survived. So in the intersection of my own health issues, challenges with technique and what I love most: interpersonal experiences, I try to navigate between wholeness and chaos, depth and shallowness, humor and seriousness.

I am a trained nurse and am now studying the history of ideas at the University of Oslo.

Dagfinn Koch, Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, Hartmut Schulz and Mats Eden have all written music for my lyrics, and several collaborators are on the steps. Projects in progress include «Pilgrim» (for choir), «Galdr for betrayed women» (musical theatre?), «Nille» (a musical theatre from the north of Norway in the 1680s), an opera from the Laxdæla saga from Iceland and other choir/classical pieces.

I became a member of NOPA in 2018 and have received the Musikkfondene‘s lyricist author scholarship four times and NOPA’s Seed Grain funds (Såkornmidler) twice.