I november 2025 samlet tolv kunstnere med interesse for krysningen mellom ny musikk og figurteater seg på Gamle Munch i Oslo for en intensiv samarbeidsuke. Blant dem var musikere, komponister, en scenograf, en tekstildesigner, og en skuespiller. Utforskingen resulterte i en "lab-konsert" for et aldersblandet publikum. I denne filmen forteller initiativtaker Marte Røyeng om målet med prosjektet.
Film: Madsen Visuals
Støttet av: Kulturrådet, FFUK og Oslo kommune
«EFUNGELIUM TRISTI» by Damkapellet & Sono Figures Society
WP Koncertkirken, Copenhagen 15 February 2025 (VinterJazz)
Josefine Weber Hansen: soprano
Nadia Okrasko: piano
Irene Bianco: percussion
Mika Persdotter: viola
Nicole Hogstrand: cello
Marte Røyeng & Sarah Buchner: puppeteer, composition
Nat Johns: puppeteer, puppet- and costume design
Johanne Daucke: tailor
Petter Asbjørnsen: puppeteer
"In the dark recesses of earth and loam, intertwining tendrils of thread connect us, feed us, and leach us dry.
What is individualism in the world of fungi?
A fungal deity holds its court of mycelium subjects, that through sound and movement attempt to find identity, community, and freedom."
This visual and auditory performance explores how puppets are brought to life in the hands of classically trained musicians. The 45-minute piece is a new commission developed and composed by Sono Figures Society in collaboration with five musicians from the renowned chamber music collective Damkapellet.
In collaboration between these two female/non-binary-trans groups within the scene for music and performing arts in Scandinavia, this original work for chamber quintet and massive marionette puppet unfolds into a journey filled with weirdness, unpredictability, and music in motion.
Sono Figures Society is a Copenhagen based group comprised of Norwegian composer, musician and puppeteer Marte Røyeng, German vocalist, puppeteer and puppet maker Sarah Buchner (based in Denmark) and Danish-American textile and costume designer Nat Johns. They met over their shared fascination for contemporary puppet theater and experimental sound, aiming to contribute through cross-disciplinary artistic innovation within the Nordic scene for experimental music and theater.
Damkapellet is a music collective formed in 2016 to bring diversity to the Danish music scene by highlighting and performing music by artists who define themselves as women, non-binary or transgender. The collective debuted on 8 March the same year at KoncertKirken, Copenhagen, celebrating International Women’s Day. As an ensemble, Damkapellet embraces large parts of art music, from newly composed music and improvisation to opera, Baroque, children’s performances, and performance art. Today, Damkapellet consists of 15 members from Copenhagen, Malmö, and Oslo.
Supported by: Københavns kommunes Scenekunstudvalg, Music Norway, Norsk komponistforening, Dansk komponistforening
Composed by Marte Røyeng
Performed by Aurora Pambianchi Øvrelid, Sarah Buchner, Marte Røyeng
Puppet built by Nat Johns
Filmed by Manuel Madsen
Malm & Eng is a collaborative project with Siril Malmedal Hauge and Marte Røyeng. On November 1st they release their first album as a duo on Dugnad rec, called ‘det flyvende inni meg’. The album features Jonas Røyeng as producer, co-composer and musician. Listen to it here.
On her first pop release since Reach in 2019, Marte has teamed up with producer and brother Jonas Røyeng to make a three-track EP which swings towards the extremes of everything from American Folk to Dubstep. Find Otherend on Bandcamp and all streaming services.
As part of the group Sono Figures Society I will be performing a newly composed collaborative work alongside Sarah Buchner and Nat Johns at Klub PRiMi on March 26 in Copenhagen. Show starts at 20:30. Sono Figures Society performs a freshly composed work on this evening, presenting their latest developments within the world of "sound puppetry".
Incredibly inspiring to have my first effort at a chamber ensemble piece featuring puppetry – "Wecarryus" (2023) – premiered in the stunning Grünewaldsalen in Konserthuset Stockholm by Damkapellet (long time dream collaboration come true) thanks to a commission from Konstmusiksystrar (who work to create a sisterhood in music, I admire them a lot). I was also lucky to meet and have a concert pre-talk with writer and critic Hedvig Ljungar and composer Tove Kättström (her beautiful piece "Map of Lost Sisters" was also premiered). Warm thanks to the musicians Nadia Okrusko (piano), Tove Bagge (viola), Hannah-Rae Hampson (cello), Irene Bianco (percussion) – and special thanks to Josefine Weber Hansen (soprano) for taking on the role of singer–puppeteer so gracefully. Sarah Buchner is the creator of the Little Sister puppet, without whom the piece would be nothing. Thanks to everyone involved and to everyone who came to hear on the 17 September 2023. // Photos by Timjan Wall
My piece “INNI” (2019) for solo percussion will be performed by Anders Kregnes Hansen on September 8th at Friscena, Gjøvik, Norway – as part of the festival Inn:pust 2023. Programme
Photo by Nat Johns
SONO FIGURES SOCIETY is the newly founded group of the two artists, composer/performer Marte Røyeng and vocalist/composer Sarah Buchner. They met over their shared fascination for contemporary puppet theater and experimental sound, aiming to contribute through cross-disciplinary artistic innovation within the Copenhagen scene for experimental music. Aesthetically dedicated towards punk surrealism their work explores different methods to connect sound and puppet from improvisation, to composed theater over composition for a visual element as it would be an instrument. The group is on a long term journey to research what different meanings the term sound-puppetry can hold. They debuted in Copenhagen with their first piece ‘Kumulus Morpho’, showcasing a larger-than-life figure at Ubåden in Nyhavn April this year.
For the ILK summer sessions they will invite improviser and composer Michaela Turcerová for a collaboration of electro-acoustic sounds, small and big figures.…
Line up: Sarah Buchner, Marte Røyeng, Michaela Turcerová (all: puppets, instruments, tape)
The performance happened at ILK Sessions Sunday 9 July.
The Blomsterbed collective was interviewed on Spillerom Søndag about who they are and their staircase performance "Rite of Passage" in the Munch museum on Only Connect Festival of Sound.
Spillerom is a radio show devoted to contemporary music from the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
Blomsterbed is a collective of four composers based in Oslo – Marte Røyeng, Astrid Solberg, Elias Nurmi Schomers and Guoste Tamulynaite.
Listen here:
https://radio.nrk.no/serie/spillerom-soendag/sesong/202205/MKMU03001922 (Norwegian)
Marte's piece BeneVolant within the collective performance Rite of Passage as part of the nyMusikk festival Only Connect on April 28, 2022 at MUNCH museum.
Foto: Signe Luksengård
«STUP» is a visual concert project with music by Malm & Eng (Marte Røyeng and Siril Malmedal Hauge) and visual theatre by Ellen Jerstad & Vega Drake Carlsson. Featuring the percussion duo Rattlebelles (Nora Sjøgren and Ylva Bråten Rian) and performer Victoria Gulliksen. «STUP» is about the high-intensity sensation of standing on a diving board. Will you jump?
LOWAL, a duo piece composed by Marte for violinist Larissa Terescenko and guitarist Tormund Blikra Vea, premiered in November at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. "LOWAL is about efforts to be self-sufficient and escaping external influence. It is also about allowing the other to enter and allowing parts of oneself to be shared instead of guarded"
Marte was featured as one of three composers in a portrait interview on Spillerom Søndag, a radio show devoted to contemporary music from the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
«Møt tre komposisjonsstudenter på Norges musikkhøgskole, og tre nye stemmer i norsk musikkliv - Marte Røyeng, Anna Berg og Maia Viken. Hva fikk dem til å satse på komposisjon og hvor har det ført dem musikalsk?»
Listen here (Norwegian).
Click here to listen to excerpts of Marte Røyeng's works as a contemporary composer
Marte's composition for solo piano has been selected to be performed at the Ung Nordisk Musik festival in Aarhus, Denmark in August 2021.
Sounds from tourists on a whale watching tour are juxtaposed with underwater recordings of killer whales and pilot whales. The whale sounds might remind one of singing, cries or a baby cooing, and give associations to human emotions. Connections rise up, if only as fantasies of something common. A whale is different from us. As is a machine. All the same, we might listen to both to find signs of life that are similar to our own. The sound of whale clicks is a pulse without breath. A boat motor humming is a presence with changing intensity.
The piano might be heard as a foreign element among these sounds. Or as a link. The instrument contains bonds to the mechanical, to the human body, and to neutral sounds in nature (like the tinkling of a water surface). The piano plays several roles: as an imitator of real world sounds, as an instrumental sound with its own unique associations, and as a translator – creating abstractions of the experience of diving or soaring. It absorbs parts of the rest of what we hear, and creates its own signs out of sounds that move through water, air, flesh and metal.
Review of "Reach" in Nettavisen / Tor de Jazz (in Norwegian)
«Hun synger fint, arrangementene er sofistikerte og særdeles smakfulle, produksjonen til Even Ormestad (Jaga Jazzist, aha) er nydelig og det musikalske tonefølget fra en rekke sjangerfrie, unge jazzmusikanter som Ivar Myrset Asheim, Magnus Murphy Joelson, Jenny Berger Myhre og Sander Eriksen Nordahl er av det flotte og empatiske slaget. Til sammen har det ført til et møte med en svært så lovende og særegen artist som det skal bli veldig spennende å følge i åra som kommer, det være seg som popartist eller samtidskomponist. Marte Røyeng er ei flott stemme som har kommet for å bli - veldig lenge.»
«On this haunted beach / I leave my dreams behind»
These are the opening lines of Marte Røyeng’s modern-yet-timeless travelling song «Shake Yourself Awake», taken from her debut album "Reach" that was released earlier this year. Marte recently posted a live session video of the song, performing alongside guitarist Bendik Bergestig in an Oslo apartment. The duo carefully builds around the evocative lyrics, moving from a gentle simplicity into a striking musical exclamation.
«I was washed up on the shore / my dreams lay scattered around me / too wild to carry with me into foreign land»
The song was written through perspective of a boat refugee, who arrives on a foreign shore and takes to the road, accompanied only by the ghosts of a previous life. Yet the urge to continue forwards is stronger than the temptation of escaping backwards into past dreams. From the depths of Røyeng's sombre and poetic lyrics arises a striking hommage to the grit of the human spirit.
«So I shake myself awake / some dreams you’re meant to follow / Some the waves will break»
This fragile yet forceful performance takes us into the mind and memory of a persistent walker. Someone who is embracing the changes that has forced them to break up from all they had known, but who is determined to reach towards a new life.
Photo: Erlend Sæverud
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"Shake Yourself Awake", from Marte Røyeng's debut album "Reach" (2019).
Recorded live in Oslo, featuring Bendik Bergestig on electric guitar.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WCYG351CRQ
Shot and directed by Alvilde H. Naterstad
Marte Røyeng – Reach
available now on all digital music services including:
Norwegian singer, songwriter and composer Marte Røyeng's debut as an album artist comes with «Reach» (Oslo Session Recordings). Produced by Even Ormestad, the album was recorded in Albatross Recorders, Oslo, and in the analogue atmosphere of Athletic Sound in the town of Halden, Norway. It includes ten original tracks written by Røyeng.
Listen now on all digital platforms!
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2Lk6x9K
iTunes: https://apple.co/2YaQHzZ
Marte's album debut comes out 24 May on Oslo Session Recordings. It will be available for purchase on vinyl, CD as well as digital streaming.
The first single off the album will be out on 3 May!
From Herr Nilsen, Oslo, January 2018.
Photo: John Nordahl
