During the last years, Josefine Opsahl has drawn attention to herself as an artist who is not limited by genres and traiditional artist roles. As both a classically trained cellist, solo and ensemble performer, and composer, she creates strikingly original music in the borderland between tradition and renewal, expertise and intuition, score and improvisation. 

Now she is releasing her debut for Dacapo Records, the solo album Atrium for cello and live-electronics composed and performed by Opsahl herself.

Cello and electronics, woman and machine

The title of the new album Atrium has two definitions: one architectural (a hallway or courtyard in the middle of a building from Ancient Rome) and one biological (the two upper cavities of the heart, which pump blood to the ventricles). Out of their collision, Josefine Opsahl draws a reverberating series of dualities: soft/hard, organic/manufactured, natural/cultural, human/machine. 

The dualities are expressed most fundamentally in her distinctive instrumental set-up of cello and live electronics, using a selfmade board of loopers,  harmonisers, reverb and delay effects, and more, that allow her to build entire orchestras of electronically modified and duplicated cellos live.

Women figures and reverberating spaces

Josefine Opsahl is occupied with how architectural spaces and their resonances impact her compositions. 

The larger works on Atrium were inspired by or commissioned for architectural spaces, such as the National Gallery of Denmark and the Utzon Center in Aalborg. Town Will Change Town Will Remain was composed as a fanfare for the opening of the Copenhagen Museum in 2019 draws on the sound of carillon of Copenhagen City Hall.

Women – especially those marginalised by history – figure just as much in this music as architectural spaces. Gaaer ikke Soels og Maanes Vei ned under dybe Hav? is composed as a response the painting Mermaid (1847) by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann and challenges our gendered readings of instruments and sound. 

The work Pendulum considers another pioneering female artist, the spiritualist Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, and how marginalised figures in history can be
catalysts of much larger movements, whose potential we cannot know.

Singles and music videos

Prior to the album release, three singles from the album will be released. On Friday 1 July one can hear the single Liquid Entity on all streaming services, on 8 July the single Gaaer ikke Soels og Maanes Vei ned under dybe Hav? will be released, and the week after that, on Friday 15 July, the third single Town Will Change Town Will Remain is out. 

Josefine Opsahl has produced music videos for the three singles. Below here, you can watch the music video for Gaaer ikke Soels og Maanes Vei ned under dybe Hav?, which is recorded at Thorvaldsen's Museum in Copenhagen. Watch the video below here or on Apple Music.