Festival Concert: The Music Behind the Banners

From marching bands to ground-breaking art with Tora Augestad and her band «Music for a while» and Alexander Nevsky male voice choir.

With their military origins, flags and banners in their simplest form show the difference between friend and foe on the battlefield. The use of drums, brass and catchy marches have the same origin – warfare. In peacetime we use both kettle drums and trumpets to mark the major events such as the 1st of May and the National Day.

We also use music for political and ideological struggle. Some of the most amazing music created throughout history, is music that springs from the struggle for Christianity and socialism. The clear traces of Christian faith and socialism also have something in common in Russia, Germany and the Nordic countries.

When Tora Augestad and Aleksander Nevsky’s choir perform the song «Wrath» from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill’s ballet «The Seven Deadly Sins», the Bible and Karl Marx merge into something that is without doubt part of the Russian trace in Norway, but also the origin of our modern European civilization and the Nordic social model with room for faith, passion and equality.

Tora Augestad lives in Berlin and is one of our foremost performers of music by composers such as Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill. Tora Augestad and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra received the Spellemann Prize 2018 for the album «Portraying Passion», in which the entire Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s «The Seven Deadly Sins» was recorded. In Kirkenes, Augestad comes with a trio from her band «Music for a while». One of the country’s most sought after ensembles, with its slightly unconventional cast. Tora Augestad and «Music for a while» (Martin Taxt – tuba, Pål Hausken – drums, Trygve Brøske – piano).

Established 20 years ago, Alexander Nevsky male voice choir from St Petersburg is led by Boris Satsenko. The inspiration is the Gregorian tradition, as well as older polyphonic music from the Armenian church. The choir also sings secular classical music, folk and popular Soviet songs.
(Aleksandr Karpov, Egor Nikolaev, Yulian Danshin,
Aleksei Barashev, Aleksei Karpov, Egor Bogorad,
Vladimir Semagin, Evgeny Gusin, Aleksei Goloviznin,
Sergei Goloushkin, Sergei Evdokimov.)