Singing Trees

"Mytomato is a brilliant piece, dancing away on the borders of parody and multi-layered commentary – musical and extra-musical – all woven together with witty irony and creative craziness."

"Die grafische Notationstechnik Soune, an der der Komponist seit Jahren arbeitet, transzendiert durch ihre visuelle Komponenete die Grenzen traditioneller Notation und bietet Raum für humorvolle, tiefgründige und gleichzeitig körperliche Erlebnisse auf der Bühne. "

"Intellectually stimulating and teasingly funny art of our time."

"A peculiar, yet ever-so-wonderful mixture of absurd comedy and versatile virtuosity, gorgeously performed by Heikkilä and Kozlovski"

"This three-hour, precisely timed sound structure is a confusing, constantly moving deconstruction of language, voice and sound. […] The bizarre fascination that the spectacle has created will not get out of your head so quickly."

"Voice Box was full of tongue in cheek [...] that allowed the audience to fully join in."

"The avant-garde business trip to the green creates a situational border experience with a feel-good program."

"The audience […] experiences an masterfull musical performance, which is then deconstructed in an irritating sequence of events at different locations in a deliberately bizarre manner."

"Delightful and playful experimental opera from young Finnish composer"

"Genuinely avantgardistic German music theatre."

Ecologist Suzanne Simard has shown that trees use a network of soil fungi to communicate their needs and aid neighbouring plants. They communicate about the environment, stress and danger and simultaneously share water and nutrients. (Yale Environment 360)

This process is the starting point of the composition Singing Trees, a collaboration with Voxnova Italia. Using the Soune notation, Miika composed the starting point and the tools for the four singers to develop their own stories while moving the Soune components. In a sense, the composer is here the soil fungi (I provide the communication method) and the unpleasant dryness and pleasant rains (drama is always good), but the singers themselves decide precisely how they want to communicate those things.

The piece is performed by

Nicholas Isherwood (artistic director), Victor Andrini, Felicita Brusoni, and Elisa Prosperi.

Premier is at the Contemporanea Monferrato festival in September 2024.

Photos by Joanna Bergin, Sanzio Fusconi, and Elena Gregori

The project is supported by

Other projects: