Working with both electronic sound processing and acoustic sound, Tone Åse has always been exploring new possibilities as improvising vocalist. She interacts with her fellow musicians both in the traditional sense of being a singer, but also as a soundscaper, stretching the instrumental capabilities of the voice in the improvised interplay. Her artistic material is the whole span between the singing and speaking voice, the words as a potential for both semantic meaning or/and as soundmaterial, and the possibilities of electronic processing and deconstructing/reconstructing.
Her ways of working started off experimenting with the voice itself in the improvising a cappella group Kvitretten (Åse/Raknes/Asbjørnsen/Slettahjell, ) who were breaking new ground for a cappella music in Norway and elsewhere in the 90’s. Further on she has been part of (and leader for 2006-2011) improvising vocal ensemble Trondheim Voices, and initiated their work with live electronics that started in 2011. Tone Åse has developed much of her work with electronic soundscaping through her long time collaboration in her band BOL /Bol&Snah with keyboard player Ståle Storløkken and drummer Tor Haugerud – and since 2013 also Hans Magnus Ryan, guitarist of legendary Norwegian rock band Motorpsycho. Through different collaborations and projects, among others Voxpheria with drummer Thomas Strønen, early Live Maria Roggen Band, Marilyn Mazur’s Future Song, Tone Åse/Sten Sandell duo and lately the quartet “Operadicals” (Åse/Nowitz/Baumann/Sandell), she has explored and developed further her own way of working within different improvisational settings.
Åse has worked with various solo formats, lately the performance “Samtalen- en soloforestilling med flere stemmer” (“The Conversation- a solo performance with several voices”) where she also works with sound installation, body and audience interaction.
She has since 1994 released several CDs with the groups Kvitretten, Trondheim Voices, Voxpeheria, Åse/Sandell and BOL/Bol&Snah, besides contributing to other CD productions. She composes for many of her projects, in addition to choir/vocal ensembles and music for theater /storytelling.
Tone, born 1965 in Bergen, Norway, started off her education as a classical singer, but at the Conservatory of Trondheim, NTNU in 1991, she was also given lessons in jazz improvisation by one of the mentors of the Jazz Department, saxophone player Jon Pål Inderberg. Her Master degree in musicology, now with jazz vocal as her main instrument, was started in 1994. Vocal teachers were Elin Rosseland and Sidsel Endresen, who also were of great importance and inspiration as performing artists, and still are. Based on many years of teaching improvisation, both as a choir conductor, workshop-leader and teacher at the Institute of music, NTNU, she finished her Master degree doing research on this practice (NTNU 2007). From 2008 Tone Åse was a research fellow at NTNU, in The National Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowships Program, which she fulfilled September 2012. Her supervisors were Carl Haakon Waadeland and Maja Ratkje. In her project she continued her development and research in the field of voice and electronics in improvised music. She is now combining her performing activities with a position as professor at NTNU, dep of music.