MENU CLOSE

NJORD Copenhagen LAND OF YOUR LOVE KoncertKirken

VOCAL CONCERT // LAND OF YOUR LOVE

Folk music’s modes and tones are the focal point, as Iranian poems mix with Norwegian folklore during the NJORD Biennale’s vocal concert LAND OF YOUR LOVE on Friday 31st January.

This evening’s programme is based on the festival composer Lasse Thoresen’s love of folk harmonies and his years of collaboration with vocal sextet Nordic Voices and folk singer Berit Opheim Versto.

LAND OF YOUR LOVE
Around 170 years ago, Iranian poet, theologian and women’s rights advocate Fatimah Baraghani (1814-1852) lifted the veil from everyone’s eyes. It was an act for which she suffered a brutal death. Given the nickname Táhirih – the pure one – she became a symbol of women’s struggle in the Middle East to this day. With hindsight, her final words ought to have read  “You can kill me, but you can’t stop women’s liberation.”

We begin the evening with Thoresen’s latest vocal work LAND OF YOUR LOVE, which is based on two poems by Táhirih and one poem by the Norwegian national poet Henrik Wergeland (1805-1848). Based on the three poems, LAND OF YOUR LOVE examines women’s lack of religious and expressive freedom in the world in general – but especially Iran.

Thus, in a distinctive combination of Middle Eastern scales, Norwegian folk tones and poetic modes, LAND OF YOUR LOVE offers a political outcry in modernist tonal language and avant-garde song technique.