En núna?
**Heiða and Tinna**
Harpa, Norðurljós

7:30 PM
**March 1st**

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Composers Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir, Þórunn Björnsdóttir, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson and Gunnar Karel Másson have written music especially for Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir and Heiða Árnadóttir. These compositions travel through electric atmosphere, emotions of serenity, imitation, desperation towards the central stage. Þóranna Björnsdóttir will participate in the performance of her piece Ilm og ómleikar.

The programme

Scent & Sound games by Þóranna Björnsdóttir

Spirit III - Reset for voice and harmonium by Þórunn Björsdóttir
Songs of Violence/Songs of Despair by Gunnar Karel Másson, for voice, toy piano, and prepared piano.
Mamma pikkar á tölvu sumarið 1988 for toy piano by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, is inspired by a little poem about youth.
Adibaran Ocirebal is a solo opera for voice and electronics by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson.

Performers

Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir is a concert pianist with a broad experience in new music having premiered numerous works written especially for her. She is active in the Icelandic experimental music scene working on a regular basis with Icelandic composers along with solo works with artists including Helmut Lachenmann, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Peter Ablinger, Morton Subotnick, Cory Arcangel and Mme Yvonne-Loriod Messiaen.

21st century music is her passion. Prepared piano, electronics, toy piano, theatre pieces and performance works often show up on her programs. In recent years Tinna has been active as a performance artist, making installations, soundscapes and performance works with materials like piano parts, her own brainwaves, hot and cold glass and electronic music.

The singer Heiða Árnadóttir is the local artist of the Dark Music Days festival 2020-2022. In her career she has emphasized the performance of modern music, folk, jazz, experimental, as well as lieder. She has premiered many works by Icelandic composers such as Gunnar Karel Másson, Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir, Hafsteinn Þórólfsson, Þórunn Björsdóttir, and Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson.

In addition to numerous concerts in Iceland where Heiða has premiered compositions with Ensemble Adapter and Caput, she has performed in Holland, Belgium, France, India, Sweden and Denmark. Heiða performs regularly in festivals including Nordic Music Days, Iceland Airwaves, Skálholt Summer Festival, Siglufjörður Folk Festival, Reykjavík Jazz Festival and a range of foreign festivals.

Heiða’s performance as a singer/songwriter in the band Mogil has produced the release of four CDs. Their CD Ró was nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards in 2008, and their newest CD Adventa , based on Gunnar Gunnarsson´s famous novel of the same name, was issued by the German publishing company Winter and Winter in 2019.

The composers

Gunnar Karel Másson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1984. He started studying music at an early age and has played a diverse range of instruments. His focus is writing chamber music for intimate venues. Additionally Gunnar Karel is making his mark as concert producer. He founded the Sonic festival in Copenhagen with Filip C. de Melo in 2012 and is one of the curators for the Peripheriberry group. Previously Gunnar Karel was the Artistic Director of Dark Music Days in Reykjavik from 2016 – 2020. Recently he has taken the position as the project manager of a Nordic collaborative project, Platform GÁTT, for the Reykjavik Arts Festival.

Gunnar Karel is a member of Danish Composers Society, the theatre group 16 elskendur, and the Icelandic composers collective S.L.Á.T.U.R. He studied composition in Iceland and Denmark with Tryggvi Baldvinsson, Dr. Úlfar Ingi Haraldsson, Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen, Juliana Hodkinson, Jeppe Just Christensen and Niels Rosing Schow.

Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir is a sound and visual artist based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She studied music from an early age and graduated as a classical pianist. Þóranna immediately turned to the field of contemporary interdisciplinary art. A graduate of the Royal Academy of art in The Hague, Netherlands, Þóranna has worked as a video and performance artist in the electroacoustic field exploring the use of different mediums, realizing her work through film, performances, and installations. She works as a sound and performance artist with Wunderland creating experiences, performances, and workshops.

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson's musical thinking is based on a rhythmical system that transcends the boundaries of pulse and traditional notation. This is often represented in his works through animated notation; that is screening musical symbols on a computer monitor.

His music has been performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Adapter, Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble l'Arsenale, Tøyen Fil og Klafferi, Defun Ensemble, Aksiom Ensemble and Nordic Affect as well as soloists such as Timo Kinnunen, Matthias Ziegler, Roberto Durante and Georgia Browne.

Some of the festivals that have included Guðmundur's music are Tectonics in Reykjavík and Glasgow, Transit Festival, November Music, Time of Music (Musikin Aika), Music for People and Thingamajigs, MATA, Nordlichter Biennale, Timisoara International Music Festival and ISSTC 2014 in Maynooth Ireland, where Guðmundur was a Keynote speaker.

Guðmundur Steinn studied musical composition at Mills College in Oakland, California and Iceland Academy of the Arts and at summer courses in Kürten and Darmstädt. He has been active in the composer collective S.L.Á.T.U.R. in Iceland and taken part in its festival Sláturtíð, the Jaðarber concert series. As a performer he plays with Fengjastrútur Ensemble and directs his own small ensemble, Fersteinn.

Þórunn Björnsdóttir (1971) studied music and visual arts in Reykjavík and the Netherlands. She is an avid recorder teacher and performer in addition to publishing poetry. As a composer, Þórunn has composed music for dance, various instrument settings, and electronic performance. Her compositions often have a strong performative aspect evident in the performances and installations in her repertoire. The thematic focus is to portray a strong sense of the actions and notions of everyday life. Þórunn’s works constantly test the boundaries between the personal and the public. Her works have been performed both in Iceland and other European countries.

Scent - & sound games by Þóranna Björnsdóttir

Works for voice, keyboard instruments and sound.

Performed by Heiða Árnadóttir, Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir and Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir

The workflow of the piece consisted of using five different scents to stimulate the sense of smell, trigger emotions and create scent-sound integration. In this way the three of us made connections to music based on the space that sprang forth from the smells and the emotions that emerged as we smelled; smell the world and listen to what he has to say. There is a deep and mysterious connection between the movements of celestial bodies, environmental factors, aromatic molecules created by plants and the atmosphere we breathe, a connection that creates breath, vivid images and memories. Like sound, smell is inherently intangible but moves us inwardly, affecting how we perceive time, stimulating a plethora of emotions - joy, optimism, serenity, desire, love; can soothe fear, unrest and anxiety. In collaboration with Heiða and Tinna, I researched a common interface, images and memories related to the smells and the musicality of that research shaped the form of the work.

Spirit III - Reset by Þórunn Björsdóttir Work fyrir voice and harmonium.

In this final part of the three-part work Spirit I, II, III it is time for a reset. This time, like in former movements, the working process has a strong improvisational touch done in a close collaboration with the performers. The two voices are reaching out to reset where the fine thread of imitation is spinning together with the voices persistent quest and notion for harmony.

´As you walk in, the wooden floor becomes alive, creaks, attempting to sound like a star in the blue ceiling. Pump and yap, here and there, taste of a song, taste of another time. A reset.´

Songs of Violence/Songs of Despair by Gunnar Karel Másson, for voice, toy pian and prepared piano.

In “Songs of Violence” I used the last words of four black lives which were lost in the custody of the police in USA recently. As contrast to the difficult subject matter, the toy piano weaves a soothing chord heavy melody which reminds one of innocence and childhood dreams. For the most part the voice is without any melodrama, as the words are in themselves rather dramatic, which makes it unnecessary to further that with heavy tonal material or theatrical gimmicks.

The texts which are the foundation of “Songs of Despair” are based on letters written by captives in the nazi concentration camps and sent to their families. As a nod to history I decided to use exclusively 12 tone material for these songs, as a new beginning at the end of world war two, to dissipate and obscure the troublesome connections to the past. Which in turn, is a stark contrast to the consonant melodies used in “Songs of Violence”.

Songs of despair

I - 23. May 1941

Dear Mummy and Daddy,

Today it has been raining all day.

I am playing with Vitya and Grisha.

I kiss and hug both of you very tight,

Yours, Edik

II - 9 october 1941

Now I have no hopes left

Goodbye, my darling sister,

good luck to you,

bring up your dear children in happiness and good health.

Thousands of kisses

on your sweet eyes

Kisses to Father and Mother

Goodbye

forever

all my thoughts are with you.

III - 1941

My beloved mother, I am writing to you.

I want to see you.

IV - 27. December 1942

Now I am here

without you dear mother

and I am very bad.

I am not a child any more

but when the night comes

I cry.

On the camp door here it says “Work sets you free”.

I kiss you.

Songs of violence

I - Leave me alone

Eric Garner in memoriam

I'm minding my business

officer

I'm minding my business.

Please just

Please just leave me

alone.

I told you the last time,

please just leave me alone

II - For what?

Sandra Bland in memoriam

What I was doing was typical

I was getting out of your way

You were speeding up tailing me

So I move over and you stop me

So yeah I´m irritated

But that doesn´t stop you in giving me a ticket

You asked me what was wrong and I told you

So, now I am done, yeah

I´m in my car,

why do I have to put out my cigarette

I don't have to step out of my car

No, you don't have the right

You do not have the right to do that

I refuse to talk to you, other to identify myself

I am getting removed for a failure to signal?

Ok, you gonna yank me out my car

OK!

Alright lets do this

Don´t touch me

I am not under arrest, you do not have the right to detain me

I´m under arrest for what?

For what?

Why am I being apprehended?

Wow

(You doing all of this for a failure to signal)

You feeling good about yourself?

Why am I being arrested?

Why can't you tell me?

Why am I being arrested, why can't you tell me that part?

Why will you not tell me what is going on?

III - I´m 31

Jonny Gammage in memoriam

Keith

I'm 31

I'm only 31

IV - Please don´t

George Floyd in memoriam

Please don´t

Mama

I can´t breathe

Mamma pikkar á tölvu sumarið 1988 by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, is a little poem about youth for toy piano.

Adibaran Ocirebal by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, solo opera for voice and Electronics.

Adibaran Ocirebal is the last of 3 acts in an opera for solo voice and electronics. It is written very specifically for Heiða and her broad array of vocal techniques. The pieces work with four characters are played by one person, all battling for the central stage. In the last act they may seek equilibrium, or they should. The piece explores how we are never the same person from morning to evening.