Jorun Marie R. Kvernberg – Vardøger (UF)
Performed by Song Circus and Maren Sofie Nyland Johansen

Salvatore Sciarrino – Vagabonde blu (1998)
Performed by Maren Sofie Nyland Johansen

Michelle Lou – Untitled Three Part Construction (2014)
Performed by Anders Førisdal, Jennifer Torrence, and Maren Sofie Nyland Johansen

Many folk songs are rooted in prayers for good weather and abundant harvests, or incantations believed to have magical effects on nature. Kvernberg reflects these ancient texts in our present time, where, as modern and enlightened beings, we find ourselves in a position where we must now plead with Mother Earth for good weather. The result is an open composition for vocal ensemble and instrumentalist, incorporating sound fragments from fiddle playing, silversmithing, vocal techniques, and the promotional language of the aquaculture industry.

"The instrument emits an intense scent, from the outskirts of the world, a mixture of dance and misery," writes Salvatore Sciarrino about the accordion. However, it is the instrument’s humanity that takes centre stage in this work—a staged, breathing lung, manipulated by the performer. Sciarrino draws on natural models and everyday sounds as the starting point for intimate, delicate, and explosive explorations of the extreme limits of various instruments.

Michelle Lou has developed "an experimentally based rhythm and noise music with multimedia, performative, and installation elements in a minimal musical framework" (Michael Zwenzer). The composer herself describes Untitled Three Part Construction as a paradoxical or impossible balancing act:

"Tracing along a line coextensive with 'pedestrian space,' one cannot find their location as being one or the other, inside or outside. With quiet lines, volume and mass are suggested, planes are defined, both discrete and transitory; negative and positive space are one. Experience as accretion."