Inuit Songs

• Year of composition: 2021

• Instrumentation: voice & piano

• Duration: 7' ca.

• Premiere: 27th May 2022 at Campus Arc 1 in Neuchâtel (CH) by Melissa Jeanmaire (soprano) and Alexia Roth (piano)

• Program notes:

The two Inuit Songs narrate the testimonies of the Danish explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen (1879 - 1933), who was the first to meet and interview the Inuit communities of North America, describing their habits and customs.

The two texts used in this work are in fact extracted from the aforementioned interviews, in which two members of the community talk about their very personal relationship with music: with the interaction between sound and word, and through the search for an ethereal and almost "frozen" sound, the music here aims to "tell a story" through sonic imagination.

While the softer atmosphere of the first piece ("Everything in Me Is Song") contrasts with the greater exuberance of the second ("The Joy of a Singer"), both songs, in any case, underline the extreme importance of the relationship that the Inuit populations – but in general every human being – has with their "first" musical instrument: voice.