A song - a life

Presentation

In this new post-Brexit and Corona era the idea of communities taking part in meaningful collaborations, connecting people across all kinds of borders, seems more important than ever. The state of loneliness and isolation that human beings experience all over the world due to the Corona virus, calls for new activities connecting people in meaningful ways. Even when the pandemic hopefully lessens its impact in the months to come, meetings will preferably happen in smaller groups rather than big audiences.

With this project we want to amplify connections: between countries, communities, various groups and individuals and give a voice to those who do not often get heard.

In a creative and participatory project, citizens from GB and DK of all ages and from very different social groups share memories through singing. Memories, both spoken and musical, are brought to an international creative team for artistic development in a dynamic exchange with the singing groups.

These participatory processes with the artistic team will be documented in photo and video and this material will be brought from country to country to be added to the local performances in order to realize the international exchange in a corona safe version.
The professional music piece of highest artistic quality A song – a life, thus committed for this occasion and based on the life stories of the participants, will be presented in local versions at festivals in the three cities during the August-September 2021.
The piece will consist of complex movements composed for young voices (youth choirs + young music dramatic talents) and more simple unison parts for the very different singing groups.

Danish author and librettist Cecilie Eken will create the text in both English and Danish. Composers Søren Møller (DK) and Michael Betteridge (GB) will work together on composing the music for choir and jazz trio, reflecting their individual styles but merged and complementing each other.

Artistic Team