Singer Unni Løvlid and cellist Marianne Baudouin Lie came together through a shared interest in the diversity of tonality. They wanted to understand more, to sense more, to develop our ability to shift perspectives, and to perform and communicate across different musical communities. This project, and many others, grew out of that aspiration. So did a friendship.

Historically, a svartebok (“black book”) was a book of magic containing spells, incantations, and medical remedies. The oldest known svartebok in Norway dates from around 1480 and was found in Vinje, Telemark.

For Løvlid and Lie, this release is a svartebok of

our own time. Through art, it asks questions. It is beautiful and unsettling. It is a call to remain awake and attentive. Mahvash Sabet, whose texts have been set to music by Lasse Thoresen, is an internationally acclaimed Iranian poet who has been imprisoned in her homeland. The texts we have been given permission to share here were created under torture. Torture inflicted because of her art, her beliefs, and the questions she dares to ask.

Our Svartebok consists of commissioned works, original compositions, and improvisations. Each composer was given artistic freedom, and worked together with the musicians through an ongoing creative process. The texts are drawn from black books, witchcraft incantations, invocations, poems, hymns, and states of being. The works are shaped by different tonal systems and by their identity as a duo.