Northern Voices — How We Filmed Agata Zubel's Music Video on Iceland

Some projects are born from pure fascination. Northern Voices is one of those.

In 2016, Sema Studio embarked for Iceland to capture what cannot be captured in words: vocal inspiration drawn from Northern landscapes. A song woven from Icelandic memories, from the desire to reach into unconquered spaces — both around oneself and within, in the voice.

The Northern Voices music video is a cinematic documentation of the music of Agata Zubel — one of the most significant modern Polish composers and sopranos — set against the raw, dramatic landscape of Iceland. Directed, filmed, and produced by Sebastian Kierzek, Sema Studio. Logistics and locations: Michał Moc.

About the Project — The Nature of Voice and The Nature of Place

Northern Voices is a song woven from Icelandic memories, Northern landscapes, and the desire to reach into unconquered spaces — around oneself and within, in the voice. Sema Studio, following these same fascinations, recorded and created a cinematic documentation of vocal inspiration from the Far North. The music video chases nature — including the nature of the voice.

Iceland is not an arbitrary selection. Its landscape — volcanic barrens, black beaches, geysers, glaciers, a sky that shifts colors by the hour — is an environment that is a sound in itself. Raw, uncompromising, unsettling, and magnificent simultaneously. Exactly like Agata Zubel's music.

The fusion of the soloist's voice with the living Icelandic landscape creates something unachievable in a studio: an authentic blurring of the boundary between music and place, between artist and the space she describes with sound.

Execution — Wroclaw and Iceland 2016

The project was realized in two locations: Wroclaw and Iceland, in 2016. The production of the music video demanded logistical coordination in one of the most challenging film environments on the planet — Icelandic weather shifts in minutes, access to many locations is restricted or possible only during specific seasons, and filming in polar conditions on open terrain places demands on the crew and hardware that no standard production plan anticipates.

Sebastian Kierzek, as director and cinematographer, was responsible for the entire visual layer: frame composition, camera movement, location selection, and the final editorial shape of the material. The objective was to create an image that does not merely illustrate the music but breathes with it — possessing its own rhythm aligned with the rhythm of the voice and the landscape simultaneously.

The Crew

• Agata Zubel — music, voice, audio recording realization
• Sebastian Kierzek (Sema Studio) — direction, cinematography, production
• Michał Moc — logistics and locations
• Wroclaw — Iceland 2016
• Production: Sema Studio & Composer.pl

Agata Zubel — Who Is the Artist?

Agata Zubel is one of the most important contemporary Polish composers and vocalists. A recipient of the Paszport Polityki award, a professor at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wroclaw, and an artist whose work is performed at the world's most prestigious music festivals — from Donaueschingen and Warsaw Autumn to Ultraschall Berlin.

The collaboration between Sema Studio and Agata Zubel is not a one-off project. Northern Voices (2016) was the genesis of a long-term artistic relationship that subsequently yielded the hologram opera Outside the Realm of Time at Donaueschingen Musiktage 2022 — recipient of the prestigious SWR Symphonieorchester Prize — and the hologram opera for children Uśmiech bez kota (The Smile Without a Cat) at Warsaw Autumn 2023.

What Does This Project Say About Sema Studio?

Northern Voices showcases Sema Studio in a role that differs from corporate films for Huawei or Faurecia — yet remains deeply consistent with them. In every project, regardless of genre or scale, the mission is identical: to tell a story through imagery that remains.

Iceland 2016, Donaueschingen 2022, Warsaw 2023 — three projects with Agata Zubel, each in a different format and on a different stage, each executed with the same principle: the imagery must be at the level of the sound that accompanies it.

This capacity for adaptation — from a music video in Icelandic locations, through a hologram with a full symphony orchestra, to video art for children with a forest of projectors — is what differentiates Sema Studio from firms that exclusively produce "corporate films."

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📞 Sebastian: +48 663 393 700 | ✉️ info@semastudio.pl

Sema Studio | Music Video · Video Art · Corporate Video Production | Wroclaw, Poland 🌐 semastudio.pl