The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has gained considerable attention in the U.S. in the second half of the 2010s decade, and this 2018 release provides a good introduction to her ideas. Thorvaldsdottir has described her music as "an ecosystem of sounds and materials that are carried from one performer or performers to the next throughout the progress of a work." Further, she says, " [t]he pieces for smaller forces on AEQUA orbit the largest work, Aequilibria, which is written for a chamber ensemble of 12 performers ...
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The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has gained considerable attention in the U.S. in the second half of the 2010s decade, and this 2018 release provides a good introduction to her ideas. Thorvaldsdottir has described her music as "an ecosystem of sounds and materials that are carried from one performer or performers to the next throughout the progress of a work." Further, she says, " [t]he pieces for smaller forces on AEQUA orbit the largest work, Aequilibria, which is written for a chamber ensemble of 12 performers;" smaller groups are used for those others. Thus the concept of the "work" here applies both to the individual pieces and to the album, on which the seven compositions are linked by a common style and by similar musical materials. The pieces seem to evolve out of one another in the same way that the music evolves over the course of a single piece. Extended tones are prominent among those materials, with other instruments ornamenting them or joining in a heterophonic sound. There is...
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