Cantadoras
What can a voice be? Ritual, resistance, myth and knowledge keeper? Visionary, memory and healing? The new series Cantadoras brings together outstanding women artists who radically pose this question, each in their own way, tradition and practice. Various vocal techniques meet improvisation and performance, spiritual practice meets political resistance, centuries-old traditions meet progressive sonic art. In the first season, the new concert series by Unlimited combines overtone singing from Tuva, Persian vocal traditions from Iran, music from Karnataka, Ukrainian polyphonic singing and Ethiopian-Swedish vocal art.
Sofia Jernberg > 27.10.26
The celebrated Ethiopian-Swedish soprano, performer and composer moves between contemporary composition, noise, free jazz and experimental vocal art. Her voice ranges five octaves, from guttural growls to crystalline overtones, from microtonal glissandi to percussive sonic explosions. An instrument of resistance and exploration – wild, precise, unpredictable.
Location: Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Derya Yıldırım > 18.12.26
Derya Yıldırım’s solo programme brings Anatolian folk music to the big stages, not as folklore but as a living art form. She accompanies herself on the bağlama uses her music to tell stories of migration, resistance and identity.
Location: Tischlerei
Sainkho Namtchylak & HMOT > 23.1.27
The Tuvan singer is one of the most radical voices today. She uses overtone singing (khoomei) in which multiple tones are made simultaneously, as well as traditional laryngeal techniques. Her voice transcends the borders between 3000 years of old Tuvan tradition and noise-avant garde, between language and sound. In Cantadoras she meets with Siberian-born Bashkir sound artist Stas Shärifullá, also known as HMOT.
Location: Tischlerei
Golnar Shahyar & Atena Esthiaghi > 19.3.27
In her work, the Iranian singer and composer Golnar Shahyar combines voice, language and body to establish a politically and poetically charged practice. Together with cellist Atena Eshtiaghi, she creates open sound spaces of traditional, experimental music where vulnerability, resistance and the question of raising one’s own voice can be experienced sensorily.
Location: Tischlerei
Mariana Sadovska > 11.6.27
The Ukrainian singer dives into archaic and polyphonic singing traditions: quick interval jumps, ritual calling songs (голосіння/holosinnya), complex rhythms of koliada songs. She combines these with electronic sounds and field recordings. Her voice tells of ritual practices that were passed on orally for centuries and now sound new and more urgent than ever.
Location: Berliner Ensemble