Chords For Calling

22.01.2021 / 00:05 – 00:30
With Stine Janvin

Radioconcert with Stine Janvin + Ensemble
Listen online now!

Stine Janvin, an Artists-in-Berlin Program fellow through July 2021, has been invited by Deutschlandfunk Kultur to produce a solo piece for Art’s Birthday on January 17, 2021. To counter the current tendencies towards isolation and social distancing, Stine Janvin uses this occasion to develop a piece for multiple performers. Compulsory social distancing rules are not thought of here as a necessary evil but as a central aesthetic element.

The project is inspired by the tradition of Norwegian Lokk singing – a mixture of calling and singing with significant ornamentation and microtonal tuning traditionally – used in earlier times by the milkmaid to call animals home from the grazing fields. In order to bridge the often-great geographical distances between caller and animals, high pitches were preferred and the voice amplified as it echoed through the valleys, mountains, and forests of the landscape. Chords for Calling is a reworking and adaptation of an archive recording of a cattle call after Karoline Bergseth.

Stine Janvin translates and adapts this age-old, oral solo tradition for the big city: Chords for Calling is an ensemble piece for six performers in an outdoor setting in the city center of Berlin. The urban landscape is used to amplify the six voices located at significant distances from one another. With these calls, Stine Janvin not only seeks to intensify her current research into just intonation and the Lokk tradition and transform it into a composition, but above all to also send a signal that in these times in particular we need to find ways to affirm our sociality and reinforce community beyond our closest circles.

Given the intense nature of the pandemic situation, the recording will take place on January 17 in Deutschlandfunk’s back courtyard without an audience. As soon as the rate of infection permits it again, this first broadcast will be followed by an open-air performance in Görlitzer Park. Updates on this will be made available on our website.

With: Stine Janvin, Audrey Chen, Elisabetta Lanfredini, Liina Magnea, Evelyn Saylor & Cansu Tanrikulu

Fr 22. Januar 0.05 AM
Klangkunst, Original broadcast live on Deutschlandfunk Kultur

Stine Janvin is currently a music division fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

A coproduction of Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Listen online now: Klangkunst, 22.01.2021, 00:05

Credits: Stine Janvin & Ensemble, Costumes: Don Aretino x Muyao Zhang, Photo: Carlos H. Juica A