June 2009

The new piece for mixed choir, Elsku Borga mín, will be premiered in Skálholt on Thursday July 16 by Hljómeyki vocal ensemble.

I will start a new collaboration with Cinnober Theater in Göteborg this autumn and will give news of that in due time. This will presumably take much of my time next winter.

Staffan Mårtensson will perform Is Anybody There? with the Stuttgart Kammerensemble led by Gudni Emilsson on September 9.  This will be on the opening concert of a chamber music season in Épinal, close to Strasbourg.

As announced, Orgoras Speaks, for two clarinets and six instruments was premiered at the WDR on February 28 with the marvellous Zelinsky-Smeyers duet and the Caput ensemble.  This piece will eventually give rise to two new versions: Quite soon a clarinet duet should be ready and eventually a longer version with orchestra could come about.

February 2009

The premiere of the new piece for two clarinets and six instruments will by given by the Zelinsky-Smeyers clarinet duo and the Caput Ensemble at the WDR in Cologne on Saturday February 28.  The piece is entitled Orgoras Speaks. The programme also features Trust Me for viola, clarinet and piano.  The concert will be broadcast live.

Now working on a rather big piece for choir (Hljómeyki vocal ensemble of Reykjavík) to be premiered this summer in Skálholt, Southern Iceland, as part of the annual Skálholt Festival where I feature as composer in residence this year.

The flute solo Communion had two almost simultaneous North-American premieres on January 24 and 28.  Mark McGregor played it in Vancouver on the former date and Eric Lamb at Eastern Michigan University on the latter (his New York performance in December had to be cancelled).

The Reykjavík Chamber Ensemble with Rúnar Óskarsson, basset-clarinet, performed Is Anybody There? for clarinet and strings on February 8 as part of the Dark Music Days festival.  Bernhard Wilkinson conducted this wonderful interpretation.

Susanne Kessel gave yet another performance of ...ma la melodia at the Icelandic Embassy in Berlin on  February 18, along with other Icelandic pieces from her CD Iceland.

October 2008

Here we are at last: The website is now "live" and can be updated constantly.  The present look is totally based on the former site, but in the conversion process some graphic problems arise here and there.  Next weeks will be dedicated to correcting and completing the site.

First a photo by Horst Schmeck from my visit to the Musikhochschule in Cologne in November 2007.  There was a lecture and a performance of La métrique du cri by the school's new music ensemble (actually two performances on the same concert).

As to performances:

Trio Lurra (Melkorka Ólafsdóttir, flute, Ainhoa Miranda, bass clarinet and Helena Basilova, piano) used two of my Atloids on their programme at the Dark Music Days in Reykjavik in February.
Adapter gave yet another performance of The Blessings of Madness at the same festival.
In April Poing performed Composition at the Tampere Biennale.  
In May, Áshildur Haraldsdóttir, flute, gave the premiere of Donec Vesper II, with the Benda percussion trio.  The occasion was a meeting to honour the memory of Sigfús Daðason, poet, who would have turned eighty in May. 
Trio Gáman from Denmark permiered Forgotten Step in the Faroe Islands on August 27th and gave a couple of other performances of the piece.  They have scheduled the piece a few other times next year.
David Smeyers  conducted the Landes Jugend Ensemble in Object of Terror in Montepulciano and they will be playing it again a few times in the Cologne area this autumn.  He also took part in a performance of Vink II with the Ensemble 20/21  at the WDR in Cologne in June.
Susanne Kessel recorded ...ma la melodia on a cd with all Icelandic piano music entitled Iceland, issued in March.  She has given a number of performances of this piece but I am not so updated as to wheres and whens, except a date in Schlangenbad, Germany, on October 26.10.2008.
Eric Lamb has programmed Berging (Consummation) for solo flute on Nov. 26 in New York.

 The Remix project has proceded: by now we have six remixes ready for publishing.  They were made by Massimiliano Viel and his friends in Otolab, plus two pieces by Daniela Cattivelli with the wonderful voice of Margaret Kammerer.  I guarantee this is a curious little collection of pieces and hope to make them public soon.

 To complete the above set of remixes on cd we might be adding The Juggler's Tent, which has been recorded by Emil Friðfinnsson, horn, and Elísabet Waage, harp.

 Among upcoming projects there is a double-concertino for the Smeyers-Zelinski clarinet duo and ensemble, to be premiered at the WDR at the end of February with the Caput Ensemble.  The concert will include some more of my music.

 A number of other projects are under way – a piece for choir, one for orchestra etc. – but now when I can update at any time it is better to give news when events may be considered confirmed.