Sofia Jernberg & Alexander Hawkins - "Musho"
Musho moves seamlessly between abstract exploration and the immediacy of song, with the visceral effect of sinking into a tender and powerful embrace.
In this duo, Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins draw on their shared affinity for the music of Ethiopia, having both honed their languages in the company of musical elder statesmen from that country: Jernberg with Hailu Mergia, and Hawkins with Mulatu Astatke.
Sofia and Alexander first performed together at Amsterdam's Bimhuis in October 2016, under the name Musho - an Amharic word meaning 'Sad Song'. Jernberg's work frequently takes her to the outer edges of vocal technique, including performances in contexts ranging from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire to Mats Gustafsson's The End. Hawkins has been described as 'unlike anything else in modern creative music', and alongside his profile as a bandleader and composer, is a frequent collaborator in duo with Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell and Angelika Niescier.
Musho released its debut album in April 2024 on Intakt, where they have expanded their traditional song repertoire to include Ethiopian, Armenian, Swedish and English.
ALEXANDER HAWKINS
”Oxford, UK native Alexander Hawkins continues to chart a course that will inevitably place him in the creative category of pianist/composers of the caliber of Cecil Taylor and Andrew Hill” All About Jazz
Alexander Hawkins is widely recognised as one of contemporary creative music’s most innovative and imaginative voices. Working in a vast array of creative contexts, his own unique soundworld is shaped by a profound fascination with composition and structure, alongside a love of chance and open forms.
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’).
He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
https://www.facebook.com/alexanderhawkinsmusic/
https://twitter.com/hawkinsmusic
SOFIA JERNBERG
Sofia is a Swedish experimental singer, composer, improviser and performer, born in Ethiopia 1983. She grew up in Ethiopia, Vietnam and Sweden. Since 2011 she lives in Stockholm.
One of her deepest interests as a singer is to explore the “instrumental” possibilities of the voice. Her singing vocabulary includes sounds and techniques that often contradict a conventional singing style. She has dug deep into non verbal vocalizing, split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing.
She has performed several staged music theater pieces like Arnold Schönberg’s ”Pierrot Lunaire”, Salvatore Sciarrinos "Lohengrin” and she is currently working with a new contemporary chamber opera work, premiering in 2019, together with Cia Rinne, Henrik Strindberg and Louise Beck. Sofia will both compose and perform in this opera. She has also appeared in visual art contexts, including with artist Camille Norment’s ”Rapture” (Venice Biennale 2015) and ”Lull” (Festspillene i Bergen 2016), and as featured singer in an 80 minute cinematic work, ”Union of the North”, by Matthew Barney, Erna Ómarsdóttir and Valdimar Jóhannsson.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sofiajernberg/
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