Sarah Hennies – Contralto

17.03.
21:00–22:00
Åsane kulturhus
Show up an hour early and celebrate the opening of the festival with us!

20:00–21:00
Welcome Drink, pizza on sale in the café, an exhibiton of Raven Chacon's scores, video work in the library and amfi area

We offer a special price for the Opening Concert with The Royal Norwegian Naval Forces Band at 19.00 if you want to make a night of it. You access this offer by buying a ticket to Contralto via the ticket button above.

Aksiom:
Vilde Sandve Alnæs – violin
Torunn Johanna Blåsmo-Falnes – viola
Ingvild Nesdal Sandnes – cello
Christian Meaas Svendsen – double bass
Anders Kregnes Hansen – percussion
Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø – percussion
Martin Rane Bauck – percussion

Borealis is proud to present this emotionally charged piece by composer Sarah Hennies to round off the first day of our 2021 festival. Contralto is a one-hour work for video, strings, and percussion that exists in between the spaces of experimental music and documentary. The piece features a cast of transgender women speaking, singing, and performing vocal exercises accompanied by a dense and varied musical score that includes a variety of conventional and "non-musical" approaches to sound-making.

When a transgender man begins taking testosterone it causes his vocal cords to thicken and his voice deepens and drops into the so-called "masculine range." It is not widely known, however, that trans women's voices are unaffected by higher levels of estrogen in the body. Being a woman with a "male voice" creates a variety of difficult situations for trans women including prolonged and intensified dysphoria and higher risk of harassment and violence due to possibly exposing someone as trans unintentionally.

Contralto – defined in musical terms as "the lowest female singing voice" – uses the sound of trans women's voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.

Photos: Sarah Hennies