The pandemic forces us to keep our distance. Sometimes you have to lose something to understand what you had - in our time there is physical closeness with friends and family. Closer to you! becomes a concert where we search for closeness - closeness to music, history, our roots and to each other.  

March 12, 2020 closed the country - we chose to go into lockdown to fight Covid-19. As a result of social distancing, we began to seek closeness to the food we eat, the house we live in and the body we live in. Baking bread, renovations, trips, literature and music - we immersed ourselves in the close things, what was around us. It was just at this time that Ørjan Matre wrote Four pieces about distance to us . Miss told through sound and a desire to embrace people with music - like a warm hug through sound waves.

At all times in human history, we have gathered when the crisis strikes. We have sung together in church rooms and  turned to God for comfort and togetherness. Many of these hymns, such as Our God he is so firmly a castle, have been sung uninterruptedly since the Reformation - they connect us with the past and the people around us. They have survived the plague and war, but Easter 2020 silenced the song in Norwegian church rooms. Closer to you! is a tribute to this singing tradition. In new works, Ørjan Matre, Nils Henrik Asheim and Dagfinn Koch use the full range of hymns, from prayer house hymns to religious folk tunes, and let them resound, as an affectionate echo from a distant but not too unreal past.

Welcome!