The Epic (MA!)
28th–29th April 2022
Official opening performance of Only Connect Festival of Sound 28th April 2022, 6pm at Kunsthall Oslo.
The work will also be performed in the Monumentalsalen at the Munch Museum 29th April 2pm.
The Epic (MA!) is a twelve-tone choral work for 12 singers and 18-channel panaural microphone array that was written and recorded at the library of Round Tower in Copenhagen in summer 2021. Each member of the choir represents one semitone in a chromatic scale; they stand in a circle, each member a perfect fifth apart from those next to them. All the voices sound at once in a single simultaneous twelve-tone chord, an intense wall of sound which nonetheless continually mutates as the choir and audience move through the room, creating progression and even melody within the frozen noise.
Suaning writes: “the 12 note chord is rare in music historically, it’s emotionless, chaotic, hardcore, hard-to-swallow but forceful and has rare beauty. In the Epic, the wall of dissonance is cracked over and over by the changing mood, timbre, breath and expression of each singer as they move.”
The official opening of Oslo Connect Festival of Sound 2022 and inaugural performance of The Epic (MA!) will take place at Kunsthall Oslo 28th April 6pm.
The work will also performed in Monumentalsalen of the Munch Museum 29th April 2pm.
Sophie Star Suaning (born 1992, Denmark) is a producer, composer, DJ, painter, graphic artist and writer. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2021.