Alwynne Pritchard Composition, text, voice
Else Bø Piano
Marianne Baudouin Lie Cello
Thorolf Thuestad Additional sound design
Heiner Müller and William Blake Additional texts
Margrethe Kvaran, Helena Nakstad, Agnes Severin, Ragne and Dulcie Pugh Children’s voices

Imagine that in every song we sing, the first human utterance can be heard. Feel the sensation of muscles contracting, a gasp of air being expelled, and imagine the thread that connects us right back to the first ever sounds we made – those primeval howls of pain, pleasure, anger, protestation, and maybe even love. Then slowly, slowly, slowly these howls, yelps, screams, and moans evolved into song.

The kinetic forces that made these songs – this music – happen are as old as those that brought fish from the oceans. Older, perhaps. The forces that connect a mournful melody to the drawing of horsehair across the gut string of a cello are also present in the soft descent of rainfall, the violent eruption of volcanos, and the fragile beating of a bird’s wing. It is present in each and every angel we depict, in our love and fear of gods and demons, and even drives our abuse of power and exploitation of the earth.

Everything is motion, everything is connected, and everything is collated and organised in the body. The first breath is everything.

Funded by Trondheim Kommune and Norsk Kulturfond.

Photo: Thor Egil Leirtrø.