On 15 January Alexandre Kantorow gave the world premiere of Anders Hillborg’s The Kalamazoo Flow at KKL Luzern, as part of Piano Festival “Le Piano Symphonique”. The French premiere of the 11-minute work for piano followed on 23 January at La Musikfest at Paris’ Cité de la musique. Watch The Kalamazoo Flow here, along with an interview between Hillborg and Kantorow.
The work was commissioned by Kantorow with assistance from the Gilmore International Piano Festival, following his celebrated success as the youngest and first French winner of the Gilmore Artist Award in 2023. The Kalamazoo Flow receives its North American debut from Kantorow in Michigan at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival on 2 May 2026.
Hillborg writes of the piece,
It’s rare that a musical idea comes to me fully formed, but with the melody that opens this piano piece that is exactly what happened. I was captivated by its charming simplicity, which soon suggested more music. From almost naïve two-part writing, grand and more dazzling textures emerged: gleaming, rippling passagework that gives way to driving toccatas, as well as resonant chorales like vast, submerged bells. To me, this music suggests ever-changing forms of water (a working title was ‘what the water sang’). When I realised that the Michigan home of the Gilmore Festival takes its extraordinary name from a river, then I realised I had found my title.
On 22 January Ava Bahari performed Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No.2 with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nil Venditti, following the performance with Hillborg’s arrangement for violin and strings of Bach’s chorale Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 636) as an encore; the orchestra gave the Norwegian premiere of the work in 2021, as part of Hillborg’s residency with the orchestra.
Bahari joins a string of celebrated exponents of the work including Eldbjørg Hemsing, Lisa Batiashvili, James Ehnes, and Carolin Widmann, who gave the Lithuanian premiere of the work as part of a focus on Hillborg in October 2025. Hemsing returns to the work in April 2026 with the Detroit Symphony and Tabita Berglund.