Our concert at ULTIMA Oslo Contemporary Music Festival has been reviewed by Simon Cummings in 5against4.com!

“a performance that simply beggared belief, impossible to grasp its intricacies, leaving one simply to surrender to its inscrutable marvels, lost in a reverie of bowed, blown, pitched and aspirated friction.’

‘So complete was this impression that it didn’t remotely feel as if Soar II had actually finished, but was simply continuing on, imperceptibly, into eternity.’
http://5against4.com/2021/10/04/ultima-2021-part-3/

«slow-wave»

Bryne Kunstforening 10. september – 3. oktober 2021

For slow-wave, Ananda Serné collaborated with vocal ensemble Song Circus on a 4-channel sound installation. Spread across the room, different voices mimic the sound of water and pronounce water onomatopoeia such as: bloop, splish, splash, sprinkle, drip, drup, drizzle, dryss, drypp and spray. The work refers to soundscapes that aim to improve sleep quality and trigger ASMR (a tingling sensation on the scalp in response to certain sights, sounds, or textures).

“Slow-wave sleep” is the deepest phase of non-rapid eye movement sleep.
The colours of the textiles derive from cyanotype, indigo and a blue light-harvesting pigment found in cyanobacteria. The cyanobacteria is the simplest organism currently known to have a day- and night rhythm.

The pieces of glass draw from the work of Daphne Oram, the first woman to design and construct an electronic musical instrument. Her Oramics technique consisted of a musical language of painted waveforms that translated into sound.

Concept: Ananda Serné
Composition: Liv Runesdatter
Vocals: Stine Janvin, Liv Runesdatter and Signe Irene Time
Sound recording: Eirik Bekkeheien
Image credit: Erik Sæter Jørgensen

After a course in music criticism, students from the Langhaugen VGS attended a Song Circus concert in Bergen. Afterwards, they wrote reviews. The course was developed by Ida Habbestad and Hild Borchgrevink, who both have long experience as reviewers in Aftenposten and Dagsavisen, and editors in Ballade and Scenekunst.no.

http://nymusikk.no/no/artikler/unge-anmelder-song-circus?fbclid=IwAR02NovLYbDKK_3zfNJWJJyQK5aIqxYO_dYowyPUyBcGny9jsH7_J_kOBZs

» This is unlike anything else I’ve heard. The sounds they make are impressive and can give many different associations: a forest of birds, frothing water, dogs, crying sounds and stones that are jumping on the water surface.

Tiril Totland, 2 mm, Langhaugen videregående skole

«One can imagine snowflakes floating in the air while Frøholm plays icy cold. The vocal ensemble impresses me with the most incredible sounds. We hear everything from animal breathing and wheezing, to crying and coughing. The music is melodic but in an experimental and unusual form. Frøholm’s fiddle is perhaps the most important mood influencer, as it acts as a separate, crying voice.

Ingeborg Nygaard, 2mm Langhaugen Videregående Skole

Jippi! Our bird festival starts in one week!
It is the first collaboration between Song Circus, Stavanger Kitchen Orchestra and Ogna Scene. Saturday is most suitable for youth and adults, while Sunday is The Children’s Birdfestival. Have a listen to Song Circus´ bird univers!

Programme

Meet Song Circus and listen to the interview with Liv Runesdatter and Britt Pernille Frøholm at NRK «Spillerom».
About the story behind «Graatarslagjet» and the composers’ approach when they developed new works based on the fiddle tune and legend. Music from this year’s Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

SONG CIRCUS & FRØHOLM performing ABSENCE (2019) by composer THERESE BIRKELUND ULVO at ULTIMA Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. Interactive installation by TOVE KOMMEDAL. Commissioned by Song Circus. First Premiere 2019.

Sebastian Wemmerløv has reviewed Graatarslagjet on scenekunst.no:

“On the one hand it was possible to perceive the work as descriptive and programmatic, with the sound of the inhospitable wind over the icy water, the screams of a human or animal and the coughing and listening sound of drowning people or ghostly spirits On the other hand, it could just as well be a disinterested nature we heard, completely detached from a descriptive or empowering human gaze. The sound of the hardening sound subtly weaved into the vocal sounds with gentle and gentle overtones and flake notes, responsive played by Britt Pernille Frøholm, elongated, cautious and searing tones were broken by sometimes subtle and sometimes violent vocal gestures.

It was also striking how the relationship between time and timelessness was almost blurred. Condensations and intensifications of textures and gestures, as if something would break out, gave a sense of linear, dramaturgical evolution in time. At the same time, it was also as if the work took place outside of time, where the bodily and extraterrestrial, presence and absence, event and non-event existed simultaneously in a long frozen moment. “

Is it possible to mix spectral music with Pauline Oliveros and Salvatore Sciarrino? According to Bjørnar Hsbbestad and nyMusikk, we did so when we performed Pascale Criton’s music for the first time in Norway in May, together with violinist Silvia Tarozzi and cellist Deborah Walker.

According to 5 against 4 it was a nice experience!

«All five performers were involved in Soar II, receiving its world première, and to a large extent the music inhabited a related soundworld to the solo pieces. Close unisons abounded, notes jarring and buzzing in close proximity like same-charged magnetic poles repulsing each other. It was deeply mesmeric, exhibiting an incredible sense of simultaneous tension and rest; yet in almost every other respect the piece was similarly liminal, continuously caught between unison and dissonance, movement and stasis, noise and breath, and at the last, between sound and silence, voices and instruments alike interacting with air to create only the idea of sound, an idea made real in our imaginations. Absolutely stunning.»