Extending the Range – ny skiva med Allmänna Sången och MalvaKvartetten
- Axel Rudolphi
- för 5 dagar sedan
- 2 min läsning
Extending the Range – new album by Allmänna Sången and the Malva Quartet
It has been nearly ten years since we at Allmänna Sången released our last album, Femina Moderna (2016). In other words, the time has more than come for a new release. Our new album, Extending the Range, will be released on April 17 and is the result of a collaboration with the outstanding Malva Quartet. Across its twelve tracks, we explore the unique possibilities offered by the combination of choir and string quartet. In doing so, we have had the privilege of working with music by some of the most exciting Swedish and American composers of our time: Britta Byström, Anna-Karin Klockar, Julia Wolfe, Karin Rehnqvist, Jessie Montgomery, Erika Hammarberg, Andrea Tarrodi, and Libby Larsen.
Most of the music on the album has never been release on record before, and it has been a deeply rewarding experience to explore and shape the sound together in the studio. We also had the pleasure of working closely with several of the composers during the recording process. Notably, Britta Byström’s new work Jakt på fågel (Bird Hunt) was commissioned especially for this project, and Julia Wolfe created a new version of her earlier work You Breathe for the recording.
The album’s title, Extending the Range, is taken from one of the movements of Libby
Larsen’s Alaska Spring for choir and string quartet. We found the title fitting on several levels. In Larsen’s work, it is spring that gradually expands its reach across a frozen Alaska. Yet a similar sense of extension can also be found in the other pieces on the album. The poetry of Edith Södergran and Harriet Löwenhjelm, on which three of the works are based, revolves around the transcendent power of the imagination and its triumph over reality. Solveig von Schoultz’s poem En sådan kväll (Such an Evening) depicts the extension of the day — and of
life — into the night. Julia Wolfe’s You Breathe is based on a Hebrew prayer asking for the soul to return to the body each morning after sleep.
Similar spiritual themes also appear in other works on the album, though expressed in
somewhat more earthly ways. The nature-romantic Limu limu lima and Alaska Spring evoke a sense of belonging amidst the expansive beauty of the natural world. Strum begins with a nostalgic, banjo-like melody and culminates in a vibrant, dancing ecstasy.
Displaying a wide variety of soundscapes, we hope that the album will help to extend the
range of contemporary music, and the reach of those who write it. We look forward to sharing this music with you in April.
