"...The sounds are strange and captivating..." LA Times

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Klaus Mäkelä will perform Hillborg’s set of orchestral panoramas Eleven Gates at the Symphony Center, in two concerts on the 14 and 15 of April. The Orchestra have previously performed Hillborg’s chamber piece Vaporised Tivoli and Exquisite Corpse, under Cristian Măcelaru and Alan Gilbert respectively.

Hillborg’s 19-minute piece moves through eleven ‘gates’ of musical perception, often evocatively named: ‘Suddenly in the Room with Floating Mirrors’; ‘D-major Still Life’; ‘Confused Dialogues with Woodpecker’; ‘Waves, Pulse, and Elastic Seabirds’. The orchestral effects are just as startling and imaginative as Hillborg’s various titles suggest.

“Hillborg creates pools of liquid sound, beginning with a big, wet D-major string chord that moves to the winds as scales in the strings flutter through it….The sounds are strange and captivating but not strangely captivating. That is to say, his is a science fiction of our time - we recognize the strangeness.” LA Times (Mark Swed), 6 May 2006