Three women, three voices and three countries blend into one. Nadja Räss, Mariana Sadovska and Outi Pulkkinen searched for and ultimately found each other in Toggenburg, Switzerland, within the scope of the Klangfestival Naturstimmen (Natural Voices Sound Festival).

Mariana Sadovska, born in the old cultural metropolis of Lviv, is active throughout Europe and the USA as a composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist and actress. She finds inspiration in the music of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In particular, she has been systematically exploring the tonal possibilities of the white voice technique, which mainly uses the chest register in combination with a controlled shrieking or screaming. She weaves the melodies of archaic rituals into new arrangements and creates unusual acoustic images in her own compositions, which she interprets with her voice and an Afghan-Indian harmonium. This allows her to deeply immerse herself in the atmosphere, story and meaning of each song.

Outi Pulkkinen is best known as an experimental voice artist and expert on traditional Finnish folk music, as well as playing the jouhikko. With its 2000-year-old mythological tradition, runo singing inspires Pulkkinen’s music as a meditative, ancient feeling with deep emotion. On the other hand, Pulkkinen has created a new performative approach that combines movement and speech with musical and vocal improvisation. In her solo concerts, she is simultaneously at the cutting edge of today’s music while still keeping her music deeply rooted in ancient traditions.

The third member of the group is singer Nadja Räss, whose foremost passion is the yodel – Switzerland’s traditional form of singing that is characterised by the alternating use of the vocal registers. In Switzerland, people are familiar with various forms of yodelling that sound different depending on the region and can also be seen as musical dialects. The original form of yodelling is the natural yodel, which functions completely without lyrics and is solely sung by using syllables.

Audiences can look forward to the musical discussion between the Ukraine, Finland and Switzerland!