Musho / FRIM Fall 2026

Musho moves seamlessly between abstract exploration and the immediacy of song, with the visceral effect of sinking into a tender and powerful embrace.

In this duo, Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins draw on their shared affinity for the music of Ethiopia, having both honed their languages in the company of musical elder statesmen from that country: Jernberg with Hailu Mergia, and Hawkins with Mulatu Astatke.

Sofia and Alexander first performed together at Amsterdam's Bimhuis in October 2016, under the name Musho - an Amharic word meaning 'Sad Song'. Jernberg's work frequently takes her to the outer edges of vocal technique, including performances in contexts ranging from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire to Mats Gustafsson's The End. Hawkins has been described as 'unlike anything else in modern creative music', and alongside his profile as a bandleader and composer, is a frequent collaborator in duo with Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell and Angelika Niescier.

Musho released its debut album in April 2024 on Intakt, where they have expanded their traditional song repertoire to include Ethiopian, Armenian, Swedish and English.

Alexander Hawkins is widely recognised as one of contemporary creative music’s most innovative and imaginative voices. Working in a vast array of creative contexts, his own unique soundworld is shaped by a profound fascination with composition and structure, alongside a love of chance and open forms.

Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, SofiaJernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.

www.alexanderhawkinsmusic.com Instagram alexhawkins1616 facebook: @AlexanderHawkins X @hawkinsmusic

SOFIA JERNBERG

Sofia is a Swedish experimental singer, composer, improviser and performer, born in Ethiopia 1983. She grew up in Ethiopia, Vietnam and Sweden. Since 2011 she lives in Stockholm.

One of her deepest interests as a singer is to explore the “instrumental” possibilities of the voice. Her singing vocabulary includes sounds and techniques that often contradict a conventional singing style. She has dug deep into non verbal vocalizing, split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing.

Music theatre and contemporary opera play an important role in Jernberg's artistic work. She has embodied roles written explicitly for her in new works such as ‹Folie à Deux› by Emily Hall and ‹UR_› by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. She performed the production ‹PIERROT LUNAIRE› directed by Marlene Monteiro Freitas as a soloist together with Klangforum Wien at the Wiener Festwochen 2021, the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen and at the Festival d'Automne à Paris in 2022. In the film ‹Union of the North› by Matthew Barney, Erna Ómarsdóttir and Valdimar Jóhannsson she was seen as a singer. In 2021, she premiered Chaya Czernowin's ‹Atara› with the RSO Vienna at the Musikverein Wien at Wien Modern. In 2023, she made her debuts with Collegium Novum Zurich, Ensemble Resonanz Hamburg and Lucerne Festival Forward. In 2025, she will sing the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin's work ‹No!› with the LA Phil New Music Group at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles and the German premiere with the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne.

Instagram: @sofiajernberg Facebook: @Sofia Jernberg. X @SofiaJernberg