2010/1

June 2010

Solo pieces form an important part of my output and I have never considered them secondary products. It is therefore always a happy event when they get performed in new places. This happens regularly with some of them such as Berging for flute or A verso for piano. Last year saw the performance of Cono di fede for contrabass: Havardur Tryggvason, who commissioned it originally, performed it in Vasa, Finland.

A solo for oboe was commissioned by Eydis Franzdottir and premiered by her last March. This time however it was a smaller project: An elaboration of the lively little Blast for trumpet with an additional half, the whole making around six minutes of music. The title of this new piece is Etching. I guess Blast hasn’t been performed that much although I thought it apt as a fanfare. I have heard it played on the saxophone however.

A new piece for flute, clarinet, string trio and piano, Forbidden Mantra, was premiered by the Formalist quartet and Njuton at the Reykjavik Arts Festival on June 5. It was together with Vortex Temporum by Gérard Grisey, and I designed the piano part of my piece so that it could use the same retuned piano as Vortex. It was a great concert and a tour de force of this Californian supergroup.

It was wonderful to hear one of my chorus arrangements sung by the South-Icelandic Chamber Choir last January (Dæm mig guð), and now the North-Icelandic Chamber Choir has other two on the repertoire (Dæm mig guð II and Eg veit). I feel like doing some more folk tunes. I actually have great fun with them and take them quite far away from the original form. My set of four folk-tunes for voice and three instruments remain unperformed as a whole.

Trust Me was perfomed in Seoul by the South-Korean Ensemble TIMF in June. Forgotten Step will be played by the Gaman trio in Iceland in September and then in Copenhagen during the Nordic Music Days, on September 8. Here’s a link to the presentations of the composers prepared by the organisers: http://nordicmusicdays2010.org/artists/atli-ingolfsson

It seems I forgot to give news that my book on harmony was issued by Bjartur editions last autumn. I was very happy to get that done. The title is Hljómamál (“chord language”).

The summer will be dedicated to various leftover tasks, score corrections and such. From the autumn I count on diving into the music-theatre piece to be staged in Gothemburg. After that it seems I will be writing a piano concerto, but more on that later.