The second album in the pioneering audio-visual Voices project, co-created by Max Richter & Yulia Mahr, arrives in record shops and onto digital music services on 9 April 2021.
VOICES was inspired by, and features text adapted from, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. VOICES 2 follows directly from the first part, embodying the Universal Declaration’s aspiration to build a better and fairer world. T
he message at the core of Max Richter’s Voices 2 is one of hope. The music, and the video for the debut single ‘Mirrors’, invites us to take a breather from the rolling news agenda and to reflect instead on the aspirations in the Universal Declaration.
Positivity and a sense of potential in a hopeful new future, runs throughout VOICES 2. Yulia Mahr, Max Richter’s filmmaker and visual-artist partner, captures the image of rejuvenation in her video for ‘Mirrors’ as flowers bloom.
Yulia Mahr on ‘Mirrors’: “For all its challenges, this moment also offers us an opportunity to build anew; rather than just restarting the old world, we can invent a new one. Therefore, I have made my first film for the second part of Voices a hopeful one. The flowers are all negative versions of themselves – out of the negative, out of the dark and disconcerting – can be born a future that is full of beauty and the positive. It’s hard to see it still, but it’s potentially there. History is not inevitable. If we come together, we can create a kinder world.”
Max Richter: “There are always opportunities for new beginnings. And that’s one of the things that’s so hopeful about that text. It lays out a very fundamental and simple set of principles, which are completely available to us at all times, but we do have to choose them. That’s the challenge, isn’t it?”