Some festivals are truly unique. In the small town of Volda, surrounded by magnificent nature, you’ll find Tonehimmel — a festival “for art by living people, for everyone between the ages of 0 and 100,” as festival director Kaja Skatvedt Robak so beautifully puts it.
She continues: “At Tonehimmel, everyone is a participant — composers, musicians, listeners, birds, insects, the wind. Everything that exists between us becomes part of our concerts; we create them together.”
This year, Song Circus was invited to give the world premiere of a new work for voices and horn player Marie Solum Gran, composed by Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, performed in the wondrous Ekkodalen.
The title alone is a delight: nok sol i lommene for ein milliard år — “enough sun in our pockets for a billion years.” Isn’t that beautiful?
Or, as artistic director, composer, and music educator Magnar Åm puts it:
“Music, nature, and conversation become a unified experience that can invite people to reflect on what it means to create and to exist as human beings in our time.”