The new album is finally here!

Time to celebrate! Last Friday, the 11.11.2022, my first solo album was released! It's been a long journey from I first had the idea to this album about two years ago, through a creative and playful rehearsal period, a few intense, but really fun days in Rainbow studio in September 2021, and editing, mastering and listening to the final result before sending it out in the world last week. I'm really happy with the result, and excited to be able to share my experiment with you. For some years now, this idea has developed in me: What if I put Norwegian folk songs alongside contemporary vocal music, and tried to let the two different styles influence each other? I have always felt like folk singing and classical singing was fundamentally different, much like playing two different instruments, and still I wanted to try to let the two instruments approach each other with an open mind, and see what could come out of this. And it seems I'm not the only one, after all John Cage starts the performance note to "Sonnekus2" saying:

To be sung without vibrato as in folk singing (...)

I love it when composers' instructions can be seen as opportunities, and with this one, I tried to pretend "Sonnekus2" was really a Norwegian folk song, and see where this would take me. Not surprisingly, this offered a natural gateway to a more organic phrasing, timing and vocal timbre. What really surprised me, however, was the way the different herding calls suddenly took on an energetically playful, virtuosic and almost abstract quality once I tried reframing them as contemporary vocal music. It made me notice qualities in this repertoire that I hadn't really appreciated to this extent before, and left me with a strong admiration for the (mostly) women who had engaged in the creative processes of playing with their voices and creating this amazing music, simply to call the livestock animals back to the farm in the evenings. Pure joy in singing!

Happy listening!