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Mio, My Son - a sound experience

Created by Sofia Chanfreau and Umami Produktion in Malmö

April 25 - May 1, 2022
During the week of Litteralund's festival for children's and youth's litterature, The Sound Bench will play the work "Mio, my son - a sound experience". The sound work is about 20 minutes long and starts every full and half hour between 08:00 - 20:00

Astrid Lindgren's Mio, my son is a children's book classic that has touched children and adults for almost 70 years. In the touching beginning of the book, the foster child Bo Vilhelm Olsson sits alone and abandoned on a park bench in Tegnérlunden in Stockholm.This is where he is moved to the magical Land in the Far East - where he both meets his father The King and is forced to meet the cruel Knight Kato. Mio min Mio is an exciting story about loneliness and community, about war and love.


During Litteralund's festival for children's and youth's litterature, The Soundbench is transformed into the park bench that Bo Vilhelm Olsson sits on in the beginning of Mio, my son.
We hear Astrid Lindgren read the first chapter of the book (in Swedish). As the plot becomes more and more magical, sound illustrations enter the story. When we are moved to the magical land in the Far East at the end of the chapter, the sounds take over. The work ends with a sound poem - where beautiful, nasty and dramatic sounds from the rest of the book form a soundscape to sink into and be fascinated by.

We would like to thank Astrid Lindgren AB for allowing us to use the quote from Mio, my son in Astrid Lindgren's own reading. The fee Sound Environment Centre pays for the use of the rights goes to, by agreement with Astrid Lindgren AB, "Rädda barnen" in Ukraine.