UNNI LØVLID, MARIANNE BAUDOUIN LIE Svarteboka
Aurora Records from Norway releases a new album of Unni Løvlid and Marianne Baudouin Lie, two accomplished artists and musicians - Svarteboka.
A beautiful exploration of tonalities and different compositional approaches that blend modern composition with diversity of its aspects and nuanced experimentation.
In a historical sense, a word - svartebok (“black book”) used to be a book of magic containing spells, incantations, and medical remedies. The oldest we know - svartebok in Norway dates from around 1480 and was found in Vinje, Telemark.
Løvlid and Lie created a svartebok of their our own time. Dramatic shifts accentuate some unsettling moods and climaxes. But beyond the musical textures - the whole material seems to be asking questions. it invites to exercise a certain type of listeners' attention.
On the other hand there is a different context of the album: Mahvash Sabet, whose texts have been set to music by Lasse Thoresen, is an internationally acclaimed Iranian poet who has been imprisoned in her homeland. After the text were given legal permission to share here - it came out that they were created when the author was tortured. Torture inflicted because of the nature of her art, her beliefs, and the questions she dares to ask.
This Svartebok consists of commissioned works, original compositions, and improvisations. Each composer was given artistic freedom, and worked together with the musicians through an ongoing creative process. The texts are drawn from black books, witchcraft incantations, invocations, poems, hymns, and states of being. The works are shaped by different tonal systems, and by Løvlid and Lie’s identity as a duo.
Unni Løvlid is a folk singer from Hornindal. She is an associate professor and head of the folk music program at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH). Løvlid has a broad artistic profile, with folk song at its core. In 1999 she released her first solo album, «So ro liten tull». At the same time, she collaborated with Arne Nordheim, appeared as a soloist with ensembles including the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic and BIT20, and worked with freely improvising ensembles such as SPUNK and UTLA and folk music trios such as RUSK. In 2006 she became the first person named Folk Musician of the Year at Folkelarm, and in 2007 she received the Gammleng Prize in the folk music category. That same year she won a Spellemann Award in contemporary music for the release of Arne Nordheim's Draumkvedet. She has a solid international career and has created commissioned works for the Førde International Folk Music Festival, the Osa Festival and the Tonehimmel Festival. In 2022 Unni won a Spellemann Award for the album UNAMNA.
Marianne Baudouin Lie is a performing cellist, chamber musician and professor at the NTNU Department of Music. She has studied in Oslo, Trondheim, Gothenburg and London. From 2020 to 2023 Lie held a working grant from the Norwegian Government Grants for Artists, which allowed her to immerse herself in artistic processes and improvisation. She is active as a soloist, both in her own solo projects and as a soloist with SiTron, Trondheimsolistene and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, and as an ensemble musician with Alpaca Ensemble, SiTron, Trondheimsolistene and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, among others. In 2020 she received the Society of Norwegian Composers' Performer of the Year award together with Alpaca Ensemble. Her extensive discography includes a large number of releases across contemporary, classical and crossover projects, with several Spellemann nominations.
Lasse Thoresen is a Norwegian composer. Since 1975 he has taught and carried out research in electrophony, sonology and composition. He is professor emeritus of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. In 2010 he received the Nordic Council Music Prize for the vocal work Opus 42, which consists of four pieces written especially for the vocal ensemble Nordic Voices.
Jon Øivind Ness has written for the Arditti Quartet, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, all of the Norwegian symphony orchestras, Ensemble Ernst, Oslo Sinfonietta, BIT20, Bodø Sinfonietta, Cikada and several others.
Lene Grenager is an improvising cellist and composer who has been commissioned by Cikada, Alpaca Ensemble, Ensemble Ernst, BIT20, the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, SiTron, Ensemble Zwischentöne, Ultima, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Affinis Ensemble, among others. She is an associate professor of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Sven Lyder Kahrs is an award-winning Norwegian composer who studied with Finn Mortensen, Kolbjørn Ofstad, Brian Ferneyhough and Emmanuel Nunes. He received the Edvard Prize in 2001, and was the first recipient of the Arne Nordheim Composer's Prize in 2005.
Karin Rehnqvist is an award-winning Swedish composer. She was a professor at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and her music moves in the borderland between folk and contemporary music.
Credits
Composers: Unni Løvlid, Marianne Baudouin Lie, Lene Grenager, Lasse Thoresen, Sven Lyder Kahrs, Karin Rehnqvist
Recorded at: Propeller Studio, Oslo
Producer: Lene Grenager
Recording technician: Mike Hartung
Mix/master: Christian Obermayer
Design: Rune Mortensen
Photo: Erik Havnes
Supported by: Norwegian Arts Council, the Norwegian Society of Composers, the Norwegian Composers' Fund, the Norwegian Academy of Music, and NTNU Department of Music.
EAN/UPC: 7090057990624 (digital) & 7090057990631 (CD)
ISRC: NOLFA2604010-160
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