The Voices of Peace story

Our vision was to have 3 young lead singers backed up by a children's choir. We contacted some singers and choose Jimmy Ahlén who is very talented singer, performer and also a very nice guy. He liked the idea and wanted to try. When Donald Forsberg and Rune Gardell experimented...

...with the first demo of "Our Earth" Gabriella Gardell sang, and her voice really expressed the sound we were looking for. Gabriella has music as her major interest, and has quite some experience of singing in studio.

We then contacted the talented Lovisa Åbrandt, who is studying music with an aesthetic focus, and has played and sung together with Gabriella in other contexts,

Now the trio was complete.

We then contacted Maria Wessman Klintberg, who is a very active choir leader, for tips and advice. Maria recommended us to invite the children's choir "Brown Beans". She works with this choir in a culture profiled school and knows it’s potential.

We informed the children and their parents about the project and they were very enthusiastic. Maria tested to sing with the children and it worked just fine.

When Rune Gardell had completed the arrangement of Donald's song, it was time to add the background music. In the Sandkvie studio at Michael Lyander, the guitarist Kenneth Waernquist and drummer Tommy Brostrom built up the background music together with Rune Gardell on bass and keyboard. They had some very nice music-sessions in the port of Visby.

Afterwards strings were added by the violinist Emilio Estrada, who also established all the voice-harmonies in one morning.

The music was mixed by Micke Lyander and Dennis Silvén. Donald Forsberg supervised the production and discussed ideas with the producer Rune Gardell.

After a number of repetitions in the studio "Our Earth" was ready for release. Dan Attlerud and Docit Production helped us with the release and the layout.

Meanwhile Donald and Dan Attlerud, in cooperation with Emilio Estrada, prepared an English version and a Russian version.

At last the whole ensemble gathered together in the Sandkvie Studio to record a video with the Swedish version.

The project was carried out in a very positive and nice atmosphere. John Norrby and Timmy Skinner documented and edited the recordings – Now we had finalized the production of “The Video to Our Earth”. 

During spring this year the lead singers and the Brown Beans choir went together in a studio to record Danne Attleruds English version of “Our Earth”, which was given the name “Our United Earth”. Donald asked them to record out-of-doors, in order to show the nice surroundings on the Swedish island Gotland. At a place on Gotland called Hoegklint we got permission to record. We spent a forenoon in June to prepare. We carried heavy equipment, 50 litres of juice and lots of buns. The rest of this very memorable day the choir Brown Beans, the musicians, the parents made it possible to make a large number of recordings under the direction of the filmmaker John Norrby.

We selected the best recording. It was edited during the summer, and released in September 2015 on Vimeo.com