![]() ![]() ![]() I always enjoy hearing people describe these things that they hear and feel. " Does the idea of your music reflecting Iceland's geography make any sense? ![]() I've even described one piece of yours as " transmissions from beneath the earth's crust," and other writers have referred to the "faltering and grinding of tectonic plates. Speaking of Iceland, many journalists - for better or worse - seem to hear Iceland in your music. Everybody's working together and the boundaries are blurred. I'm thinking of the superstar Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós, which is touring this summer with a 41-piece orchestra.Īnd Björk has also done this throughout the decades - she's had choirs and a lot of strings and brass. ![]() There's a lot of mixture between the genres and people haven't even thought there's anything strange about that. You might be playing in the symphony orchestra in the morning, in rehearsal, and then play a rock concert in the evening. There's a very small population in Iceland, and people tend to do everything. So I don't know what it is that allows for this dome of energy to come through in the music life of Iceland, but it must be a combination of many different elements working together.ĭo people interact with music differently in Iceland - perhaps not so worried about borderlines between classical and rock and folk? We grow up learning the history of Western music, but the first composers coming out of Iceland, like Jón Leifs, were alive not that long ago. There is a relatively young music history in the country itself. There are great music schools, relatively accessible for everyone, and good music courses in schools for kids. Tom Huizenga: I'd like to begin by talking about Iceland, and a quote from The New Yorker 's Alex Ross, who wrote, "Iceland may be the most musical nation on earth." Then there's Andrew Mellor in The Guardian, who says : "In the third decade of the 21st century, no country on Earth has reinvented the language of the symphony orchestra on such distinctive and locally relevant terms as Iceland has." What is going on in Iceland?Īnna Thorvaldsdottir: It's hard to analyze for yourself when you come from within, to pinpoint exactly what's happening. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The composer divides her time between Iceland and her home in Surrey, south of London, where she joined a video chat to talk about the creative forces behind her distinctive music, her presence in the movie Tár and the "dome of energy" that fuels her country's artistic productivity. "In each chord there is a world of collective sounds where the small sound particles dissolve and create their own world," Thorvaldsdottir explains on her comprehensive website. The music slowly materializes from silence and continually shifts its gaseous clouds of sound. If that description sounds inscrutable, try listening to her early symphonic piece Dreaming to get a better idea. It feels both otherworldly and elemental, as if forces of nature, from massive galaxies to tiny granules, are regenerating themselves to create new, unknown structures, essential for life. Thorvaldsdottir's music is difficult to summarize because it is perpetually transforming. Two albums of her orchestral pieces were released in April and May.Įditors' Picks Big risks and adventurous friends: How composer Julia Wolfe became a renegade this year, with important premieres by the New York Philharmonic ( CATAMORPHOSIS), the Los Angeles Philharmonic ( ARCHORA) and both the Danish String Quartet ( Rituals) and the flutist Claire Chase ( Ubique) at Carnegie Hall. She's enjoying something of a moment in the U.S. Today, her music is routinely performed by the world's top orchestras and ensembles. The 45-year-old former cellist first studied composition in Reykjavík at what is now the Iceland University of the Arts, then earned a PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 2011. Yet among all of this Nordic talent, composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir stands out. It also boasts big stars such as Björk and Sigur Rós, and a bevy of composers, including Olafur Arnalds, Daniel Bjarnason and Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award in the same season for her film score to Joker. The diminutive nation is home to some 80 music schools and 300 choirs. Her scores themselves are finely detailed.įor a country whose population is roughly the size of Cleveland's, Iceland is an overachiever when it comes to its contributions to music. Anna Thorvaldsdottir begins her composing process by drawing shapes and writing words to help store musical information. ![]()
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