KRONOS FESTIVAL 2025 PERFORMER BIOS Benedicte Maurseth Benedicte Maurseth is a well-established and esteemed performer and composer on Norway’s music scene. She has studied with Hardanger fiddle master Knut Hamre for close to thirty years and is an alumna of the Ole Bull Academy. Maurseth has toured extensively as a soloist and in collaboration with others, both in Norway and internationally. She works closely with many of the leading artists across genres and artistic expressions such as Jon Fosse, Anne Marit Jacobsen, Rolf Lislevand, Mats Eilertsen, Berit Opheim, Merilyn Crispell, and more. Maurseth has written music for theater and film and other commissioned works for festivals and albums. The work Tidekverv, which was premiered in 2017, was awarded NOPA's music prize, and her song «Very Full», which was specially written for the TV series Loki (Marvel Studio), ranked high on the Billboard list. Maurseth also received many prestigious artist grants from the Norwegian state for cultivating her tradition and creative work. She has recorded albums for Grappa Musikkforlag (Hubro & Heilo) and ECM Records, and has also published books, articles and essays. Her book To be nothing. Conversations with Knut Hamre, Hardanger Fiddle Master, was published at Terra Nova Press / MIT Press fall 2019. Her latest album Hárr was awarded «Best Nordic album of the year», and received the prestigious Nordic Music Prize for 2022. In 2022 she also released the book Systerspel (Fiddlesisters) about the history of female fiddle players in Norway from 1700 until today.
Laura Ortman A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Martha Colburn, New Red Order, and as part of the trio, In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, MASS MoCA, MCA Chicago, REWIRE Festival at the Hague, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an allNative American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.