Chants is the third album by Swedish-born, Copenhagen-based violist and composer Pauline Hogstrand. Known for her work across classical, electroacoustic, and improvisational music, Hogstrand here returns to the instrumental ensemble, composing for strings, percussion, and synthesizer in a five-movement suite that unfolds like a meditation on openness, co-creation, and the clarity that emerges through presence.

Following her acclaimed electroacoustic releases The Enterer (No Technique & Forlaget Kornmod, 2020) and Áhkká (Warm Winters Ltd., 2023), Chants reconnects with Hogstrand’s background in classical music while carrying forward her signature sensibility: time-stretched structures, subtle shifts, and a trust in sound’s capacity to speak without drama or demand. The result is a work that balances refinement and rawness, structure and breath.

Written in the final months of pregnancy and premiered shortly after the birth of her twins, Chants carries a deeply personal undercurrent. “It came out of a longing to receive,” she says, “and as a calling for my heart to open.” That state of receptivity runs through the music, an openness to whatever arrives. From the first tone, a single open violin string, the sound begins to unfold. Synth layers rise like mist. Strings move in gliding glissandi, almost imperceptible yet charged with motion. Without warning, the ensemble lifts the listener into air, weightless.

Each movement of Chants is its own elemental space. The opening triptych, Gold White / The Bell Tower / Circle Forms, draws on strings and synths alone, slowly layering breath-like gestures until the ground seems to fall away. The second movement introduces percussion—not as drive, but as suspended texture, fragments circling around a consistent synth chord, creating a tension between stillness and change. The third movement, a ritualistic canon, weaves melodic lines that echo and shadow one another in quiet dialogue.

The fourth movement, Liminal, pares the ensemble down to strings alone. Here, repetition and imitation create a fragile counterpoint where silences are as charged as the notes themselves. Finally, the closing movement, For the Heart, emerges from sparse gestures into a layered chant of strings, percussion, and synths. Rhythms interlock and dissolve, edging toward chaos before coalescing into a chant-like theme—an ecstatic invocation that is both ending and beginning.

Recorded with Crush String Collective—an ensemble Hogstrand co-founded known for its collaborative, improvisation-informed approach—and percussionists Anders Vestergaard and Victor Dybbroe, Chants embodies her commitment to structures that invite performers not only to interpret, but to shape. The album was recorded at The Village Studio (Copenhagen), mixed and mastered by Adam Donoval, with artwork and layout by Hogstrand herself.

There is a quiet radicality in Chants: a refusal of spectacle, a trust in stillness, and a belief that complexity can give way to simplicity. It is music that doesn’t seek to persuade, but to be with. A sonic space to listen inward, outward—and with others.

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Pauline Hogstrand is a Swedish-born, Copenhagen-based violist, composer, and sound artist whose work spans classical performance, electroacoustic music, and collective creation. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Music, she has established herself as a distinctive voice in the Nordic experimental scene, performing as a soloist and with ensembles such as Damkapellet and Crush String Collective.

Her music is marked by a trust in sound’s own unfolding—layered intensities, gradual transformations, and an openness that invites both performers and listeners into shared presence. Alongside her solo releases The Enterer (2020), Áhkká (2023), and Chants (2025), Hogstrand collaborates widely across genres, exploring coexistence, improvisation, and collective authorship as artistic principles.
credits
releases November 7, 2025

All compositions by Pauline Hogstrand

Julija Morgan — violin

Maria Martine Jagd — violin

Tove Bagge — viola

Oda Dyrnes — cello

Anders Vestergaard — percussion

Victor Dybbroe — percussion

Pauline Hogstrand — electronics

Recorded at The Village Studio, December 2023

Recording engineer Thomas Vang

Additional recordings and production by Pauline Hogstrand

Mixed and mastered by Adam Donoval
Cover artwork and digital layout by Pauline Hogstrand

Supported by Kodas Cultural Fond's, Dansk Musikikerforbund, and Solistforeningen af 1921.

℗ & © Solen 2025.