Sanne Rambags - The Frieze of Life (2024) [Hi-Res]

'One rainy day in May 2024, our friend Morten drove us into Oslo. Leaving the car park to walk to Edvard Munchs Plass we get caught in a terrific storm. There’s lightning, a loud crack of thunder! A torrential downpour. We run to a building and attempt to shelter with others, sheets of rain blurring our first sight of the imposing, angular, contemporary museum on Oslo’s waterfront. Minutes later we’re standing in the entrance lobby, water dripping off our waterproofs, soaked through. Could anything more dramatic have prepared us for our introduction to The MUNCH museum? You will be ready. You will feel!

Then we are amongst the paintings. So many air-conditioned rooms on seven floors, such a well curated exhibition too, so many vivid paintings in strong colours. Everything from small early charcoal sketches Munch did when he was young, to paintings so enormous you can’t begin to imagine how you would go about executing one. The paintings are displayed in a specially designed, double-height gallery. Having visited the original Munch museum in Oslo a couple of decades ago, we are staggered this time by the sheer volume of work and not just paintings but beautiful sculptures too.

Sanne Rambags is an incredible vocalist and composer. Several times walking round the exhibition we are struck by similarities in the way Sanne speaks when reading texts that accompany Munch’s paintings.

Munch often celebrates human interaction with nature. Sanne talks of being ‘connected with the mystery’ and being ‘all connected’. With her voice she seems to get to connect with one’s very soul. Artist Edvard
Munch based a series of his work on every aspect of human existence using themes such as love, fear, death and jealousy. Together he gave this collection the title: ‘Frieze of Life’: A Poem about Life, Love and Death and exhibited it for the first time in Berlin in 1902.

Inspired by some of the paintings from this collection Sanne Rambags has written nine compositions on the different themes from the work of Munch. The suite includes, Madonna, The Dance of Life, The Voice, Melancholy. Sanne also creates The Sceam by repeating Munch’s own words of the moment the painting came to him, by repeating his descrition of the event on the bridge over and over in an ever more insistant and disturbing way.

Rambag’s unique voice, laid over sparce, atmospheric arrangements echo the brooding landscapes and scenes of melancholic figures that define Munch’s work. Her voice soars, cries, sobs...a barely audible whisper, or a repeated word like a tribal song over a drumbeat and viola and all the while conjuring up brooding painted landscapes.'

Sanne Rambags - voice and compositions
Roosmarijn Tuenter - viola, voice, effects
Jeroen van Vliet - piano and effects
Joost Lijbaart - drums and percussion