JULIANA VENTER & ROLF-ERIK NYSTRØM presents the new album  KASSANDRA September 19th - The single "Without Your Love" is out today

LISTEN HERE

Imagine the most private moment, a woman, sitting alone outside in the sun in South Africa, daydreaming by herself, humming a melody from her heart as the soft wind blows the dry dust slightly in small circles along the ground. This becomes the saxophone that ornaments her singing, and ends up in this little pearl of a song. No digital effects, just two people sharing a dream that materializes into a beautiful song, singing together live in the studio, and released for you to hear.

September 19th the album "Kassandra" by Juliana Venter & Rolf-Erik Nystrøm is set to release - a long awaited album showcasing two unusually groundbreaking and genre-free artists from each extremity of the globe. The project is presenting their unique musical universe and collaboration together over many years as a duo of intimate interplay on saxophone and vocals. They present an album that is deeply personal, beautiful and intimate, but also playful, explosive and furious. In their musically diverse careers the two artists have in different ways always challenged the prevailing musical aesthetics  of their place and time. The South African singer Juliana Venter known as the Queen of Avant- Garde in South africa is an uncompromising artist that always have used her captivating versatile and dynamical voice to make a stand, first against apartheid, relentlessly outspoken against political injustices by the ruling classes and the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza. 

Today the single "Without Your Love" is out - one of the first songs Juliana Venter and Rolf-Erik Nystrøm played together. It is their very own version of one of the songs that Billie Holiday performed in close interaction with her beloved partner in music, the saxophonist Lester Young. 

Through their many unique extended playing techniques, improvisations and compositions they challenge our understanding of what a duo of saxophone and vocals can sound like. Through their musical explorations around the world they have been naturalized to a wide range of styles, and on the album one can experience music from the early baroque, jazz in its most intimate form, ancient Greek myths, both their heritage of South African and Norwegian traditional music, but also inspirations from ancient Chinese and Japanese music, contemporary and dada works and even bird song exploding in cascades of sound and interference. But the expression they have created is still always remarkably their own.  

Rolf-Erik Nystrøm is one of the leading saxophonists of his time and has had a carrier both as a pioneer in contemporary music, but also in breaking down musical boundaries in every genre he has worked with.  

This album features distinguished musical guests, long time friends and collaborators, personalities that has dominated the internationally celebrated Norwegian music scene for decades, Paal Nilssen-Love on gongs and drums, Nils Økland violin and hardanger fiddle and Mats Eilertsen on double bass, produced by composer Rolf Wallin, mixed by Kåre Vestrheim and recorded by Morten Qvenild, which makes this album an unusual merge of musical personalities, some that collaborates for the first time.  

The album is titled Kassandra after the Greek legend about the princess from Troy that from the enamored Apollon was given the gift of seeing the future, but after having rejected his advances was cursed to never be believed.  

The album also features music they have created to poetry by Wopko Jensma and Georg Trakl, a remix by Rolf Wallin of all the album’s musicians take on Tchaikovsky’s painfully beautiful Hymn of the Cherubim, and the cover is an original painting is by Wayne Barker one of South Africas foremost artists.  

Juliana Venter met the  saxophonist Rolf-Erik Nystrøm in Cape Town in 2012. Since then they have performed numerous concerts together in Europe and South Africa, but also in Morocco, Lebanon, USA, China and Japan. They won the prize starring and creating the dialogue for best short film in front of 3500 other films at the Grimstad International Short Film Festival 2024 and have recently performed a concert exclusively for the Norwegian Her Majesty Queen Sonja, Haruki Murakami, Liv Ullmann, Jiří Kylián and Mikhail Baryshnikov.