Alexandra Hallén is a performer and cellist who is not afraid to put herself on the line. She works in the extremities of the cello and the voice with both great force and fragility.

On 13 February the digital only album Jounce is released, presenting a collection of new Danish works about memory, physicality and fever hallucinations. Here Alexandra Hallén pushes her craft to the limit, before the fever finally breaks.

Fever hallucinations

Alexandra Hallén's willingness to always push the boundaries of cello playing has resulted in close collaborations with many composers, including the four represented on this album: Simon Løffler, Jexper Holmen, Juliana Hodkinson and Christian Winther Christensen.

On Jounce, Alexandra Hallén uses genuine emotions and provoke forth bodily reactions. And when required, she also puts down the cello: In Simon Løffler's vocal work Graduale, a fleeting oasis of calm on the album, she sings with hands clasped tightly over her ears a fragile melody with words taken from the Last Rites given to the dying.

Alexandra Hallén also uses her voice in her re-enactment of a childhood fever dream, Barndomstapet sedd under feberhallucinationer. "Voice and electronics blur the line between memory and perception", Hallén explains and as the fever grows, the sound passes to her voice – first in groans, then in screams, then in sobs before melding in to a thrashing nightmare.

The cello as a field of action

On the album we also encounter a more distorted and crackled expression: Jesper Holmen's Vespa Crabro is a brief portait of the European hornet. The cello is electronically amplified to capture the insect's buzzing, magnified out of all proportion by the ferocity of Hallén's movements.

In Christian Winther Christen's Cadenza the cello moves rhythmically and percussively through extended techniques that seem to fragment and tear the instrument apart. The title work Jounce by Juliana Hodkinson culminates when Hallén uses two bows each fitted with a small bell and bounces the wood of the bow on a string. Juliana Hodkinson recasts the traditional sound-generating function of the cello into a field of action, where arms, hands, bows and cello merge into each other.