Solveig Slettahjell - Den mørke lytting – Listening to darkness

Using lyrics from one of Norway’s foremost postwar-era poets, the jazz singer Solveig Slettahjell has joined forces with one of Norway’s premier chamber choirs and pianist and magical music arranger Kjetil Bjerkestrand.

What happens when you put a jazz singer together with organ, synths, electronic music and a church choir?

“We call it melody-based church music,” says soloist Solveig Slettahjell.

A unique musical universe has been created where the different sounds and musical traditions resonate together. Øivind Varkøy has written the music, which in turn has been refined and arranged for choir and instruments by Kjetil Bjerkestrand.

On 14 October 2025 it will be 30 years since Gunvor Hofmo passed away. Three days later the new album will be released by KKV.

“There is a yearning out there,” Gunvor Hofmo writes in one of her poems. This longing shifts between the perception of “Now God is walking through this world and opening the gates,” to God being silent, nevertheless he is “in the terrible silence within me”.

Hofmo is deeply interested in existential and religious themes. The Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold has called her “The songstress of darkness”. The Second World War and its horrors were an important impulse in Hofmo’s work, and it also permeates the life experience in her poems where one is in a state of permanent existential alarm. When the war came to Norway, Hofmo met the Austrian Jewish refugee Ruth Maier. Ruth was arrested and sent to Auschwitz with 532 other Norwegian Jews on the transport ship Donau on 26 November 1942. Gunvor accompanied her friend to the dock, and never heard from her again. “God, if you still see: there is no everyday anymore,” Hofmo writes in one of her most well-known poems.

 The album is available on CD and all streaming services.

Listening to darkness

Lyrics: Gunvor Hofmo. Music: Øivind Varkøy

Soloist: Solveig Slettahjell

Choir: Uranienborg Vokalensemble, conductor Elisabeth Holte

Organ  and synthesizers: Kjetil Bjerkestrand

Musical arrangements: Kjetil Bjerkestrand

Producer: Erik Hillestad