https://www.nytimes.

com/2015/08/23/arts/music/the-icelandic-composer-anna-thorvaldsdottir-
searching-for-beauty-amid-brokenness.html?_r=0
With a barrage of extended techniques, the expansive vocabulary of “In the Light of Air” makes
full-body demands on its virtuoso performers but is also guided by a taut sense of narrative. In
the work’s final movement, the percussionist Nathan Davis creates dusty resonances from an
installation of metallic ornaments specially designed by Ms. Thorvaldsdottir; the pianist Cory
Smythe creates a Debussy-like gauze from a constellation of notes that the composer indicates
be played at a pace of the performer’s choosing. Recalling the post-Spectral language of
composers such as Toshio Hosokawa and Kaija Saariaho, Ms. Thorvaldsdottir’s music conjures
unseen worlds. In her score, she asks the players to execute particular passages “with calm &
ease and a subtle sense of brokenness.” The beauty of this instruction mirrors the sounds that it
produces, infused with a balance of anxiety and luminescence that feels wholly contemporary.

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/19/429076303/first-listen-anna-thorvaldsdott-r-in-the-light-of-air

The album might be called In the Light of Air, but it's anything but conventionally light or airy.
Instead, this rumbling, evocative music by composer Anna Thorvaldsdottír seems grounded
deep in the beautifully austere landscapes of her native Iceland. Don't listen too hard for
hummable melodies. While there are flashes of lyrical writing, the composer excels at weaving
sound textures together to create distinct atmospheres.
Composed for and performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble
(ICE), In the Light of Air is a conjoined four-movement suite for viola, cello, harp, piano,
percussion and electronics. ICE gave the world premiere in May 2014 at the Reykjavik Arts
Festival. The album, released Aug. 28, also includes Transitions, a piece that pushes the solo cello
into territory seldom traveled.
In the Light of Air, so cinematic on its own, sports an extra visual component — a kind of electric
light orchestra — when performed. Hanging above the musicians is a constellation of light bulbs,
glowing and dimming according to the intensity of the music.
"Luminance," the opening section, begins with scratchy, high string tones punctuated by a bass
drum, as if a small geyser were spouting steam from deep beneath a volcanic surface. The whole
piece could be a soundtrack to Iceland's varied geography.

In the second movement, "Serenity," strings intrude with icy sounds (played sul ponticello, close
to the bridge) while a subterranean hum inches forward like some primordial glacier. The cello,
droning deep, triggers a slow-moving melody in the third section, "Existence." And in
"Remembrance," the final and lengthiest movement, Thorvaldsdottír deploys
the klakabönd (Icelandic for "a bind of ice"), a collection of hanging percussion instruments she's
designed that look like giant metallic snowflakes but sound like gongs.
Thorvaldsdottír, who holds a doctorate in composition from the University of California, San
Diego, is slowly gaining recognition outside Iceland. Last year she released Aerial, a critically
successful album on a marquee label, and this year she's the recipient of the New York
Philharmonic's Kravis Emerging Composer award.
In the Light of Air might sound like it's the aural soul of Iceland, but lately the piece has been
traveling abroad, with performances in Chicago, New York and Washington. This album is a
good way to hear the magic of a faraway place and get a sense of a fascinating young composer
on the rise.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/porter-anderson/2015/08/music-for-writers-anna-thorvaldsdottirs-light-air-of-
restraint/

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: I really like writing for larger ensemble and orchestra, but I also very much enjoy
writing for smaller ensemble as well. The musical voice inevitably resonates differently when writing for
larger ensembles or smaller, so I don’t really think about it as adjustments to my aesthetic voice but rather
a different experience – that is, when I am dreaming on music for a smaller ensemble the textures require
different things so I listen for the textures in the individual instruments rather than ways to collectively
structure them into textures.

I do enjoy a lot working with instruments that have the capacity to create sound textures and chords,
which is why the selection of instruments is what it is in In the Light of Air. This allows me to work with
textures in the setting of a smaller ensemble.

TC: Am I right that I’m hearing your percussion better in this smaller construct? Maybe not “better” but
with more relief, more exposed? It stands out more sharply for me as Nathan works his way through the
score. Is this happening simply because there are fewer other orchestral forces in competition with the
percussive moments? Or have you deliberately heightened the percussive elements this time?

AT: In In the Light of Air there are only five instruments and electronics and each instrument has both the
role of a soloist as well as serving as an accompaniment. I tend to write music where the instruments are
gradually drawn in and out of focus individually and collectively, which I did in this work. The same
goes for percussion. That is, it becomes a solo instrument at times and at other times is drawn into the
background.

Perhaps this is where the use of percussion in particular differs from the use in the larger ensemble works
where the percussion is often perhaps more of a textural tool in the whole “image” rather than a soloistic
instrument – but that could also be said about the other instruments as well I guess…

TC: Speaking of percussion, piano has always been one of your classiest signature voices. But in the case
of what Cory is doing in this recording, it seems at times to take on more life of its own — maybe I mean
it seems a bit more proactive. I feel I hear this, for example, in the opening of the third movement,
“Existence,” and in these aching open-chords in “Remembrance,” so beautiful. I feel the piano leads us in
this fourth movement, taking us to that melody (I think the one from your husband) before being
overtaken by Svana’s Klakabönd. Does this work live a little more closely to the keyboard for you than
some of your other compositions have?

AT: In the case of the piano, I wanted to combine the sound world of performing on the inside of the
instrument to the more lyrical material performed on the keyboard to make use of the spectrum of the
instrument. It became very natural to do that in this work, both because the piece is relatively long so
working meticulously with the material became very important, and also because I wanted to write the
piece specifically for the performers of ICE so I drew inspiration by them individually as performers.

TC: I’ve come over the years to think of you, too, as a kind of master of tension — and this is a big
compliment, by the way. There’s such an unsettling, visceral sense of foreboding to the dynamics and
textures, and you sustain a shadow of meditation over a piece’s performance time. And yet I wonder if
the smaller ensemble doesn’t give this work more intimacy. Can you tell us about the title and its
concept? I’ve been to Reykjavik and the light there is very special. How does light come to be the
metaphor for this studied work?

AT: Warm thanks. I have always been interested in the visual aspect of a live performance and one of my
first ideas for In the Light of Air was to have a light constellation as one of the “instruments” in the work
during live performances. I wanted to have several lights that would be cued by the performers’ breaths
and instrumental performance and to have the lights subtly “perform” the audio visually. We structured
this and it creates a subtle visual layer to the work that is directly connected to the audio source in the
music, and this is where the title is drawn from.

I definitely think that the light in Iceland is very special as well, and I’m sure that the inspiration from
home is shining through there with the dark space and the subtle lights pulsating slowly to the music, but
I wasn’t actively thinking about this when I was writing the work.

TC: To  help our authors grasp what you do, can you say something about what is “Icelandic” in your
work? Mind you, it’s obviously international in its appeal — here I am, after all. But there’s something
that to my mind is a kind of spaciousness, maybe a sensitivity to continuity, that’s a kind of trademark. Is
there a way to characterize what you think is essential in your and your colleagues’ sound-world?

AT: It can be quite difficult to analyze yourself with regard to your roots – at least that’s the way it is for
me. I can only speak for myself on this, but I am definitely influenced – at least on a fundamental, sub-
conscious level – by the sense of spaciousness and closeness to nature I experience here in Iceland.

It is not so much that I am actively thinking about or analyzing the Icelandic aspect of myself when I am
working, but these things do help me a lot to find the music. The way that the inspiration from Nature
then finds its way into my music is primarily through elements of proportion and natural flow. I don’t
strive to portray the actual sounds heard in nature, or “project” it as such, but rather to allow it to inspire.

This is also where I find the inspiration for perspectives and the shift in focus between the
details and the entire sound world in the music.

https://www.wqxr.org/story/anna-thorvaldsdottir-wields-orchestral-might-chamber-setting-light-air/

Members of the International Contemporary Ensemble on viola, cello, piano, harp, percussion

and fixed electronics perform the album's title piece, a 40-minute, continuous work. (It also
includes an installation.) Instruments rarely move in sync, instead carving isolated, icy paths that
brush edges—the piece came from the idea of each musician being a “soloist in the setting of a
chamber ensemble.” A hushed, metallic burst on the violin triggers a descending line in the
harp; four raps of percussion emerge from the background like sticks crunching under a foot. It’s
a slow, spontaneous Rube Goldberg Machine, excavating itself as it moves through time.

The final and longest section of the piece, “Rememberance,” sounds the most premeditated.
The piano guides the strings into somber, shifting drones before colliding with almost-pitchless
splatters of wooden percussion. The harp steps into the foreground before ebbing back, guiding
the rest of the instruments into silence.
Cellist Michael Nicolas performs the album’s final work, “Transitions,” which Thorvaldsdottir
wrote on the theme of “man and machine.” The phrase reminds me that Doyle Ambrust, in his
profile of the composer for Music and Literature, reported that she grew up the child of a
carpenter and music teacher. It’s a symbolically satisfying combination after listening to
“Transitions” and "In the Light of Air" as a whole: not only can Thorvaldsdottir express the vast,
emotional material of open space, but she understands its blueprints. Listen this week only to
the entire album below.

https://classicalmodernmusic.blogspot.com/2015/09/ice-performs-anna-thorvaldsdottir-in.html

The instrumentation is electronics, viola, cello, harp, piano and percussion, including an installation of
metallic ornaments that appear dramatically and percussively in the final "Remembrance" movement of
the first work.

"Transitions" was written for the cellist in the ICE ensemble, Michael Nicolas, who alternately personifies
"man" and "machine" in the piece, expression and emotion versus maximum precision and accuracy.

ICE, which stands for the International Contemporary Ensemble, is a collective of some 35 musicians,
capable of morphing from the smallest chamber ensemble to a rather large chamber orchestra depending
upon need. The quintet assembled for In the Light of Air sounds absolutely perfect for the music at hand,
which makes sense in that both works were created with them in mind.

That music has considerable magic. There is a sort of sustained ritual tonal wash to the first piece with
emerging instrumental segments that stand out as having a discursive logic in the overall scheme and
great memorability. The "man and machine" oscillations of "Transitions" embody contrast and color in
different ways, displaying the possibilities in a solo cello context, so that there is a sort of inter-resonating
totality to it all, a definite stylistic congruity that is strikingly original.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir has given us considerable beauty and great depth in this program. She is a special
creative force and one most definitely to watch in the contemporary music world going forward.

http://theclassicalreviewer.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-slowly-unfolding-canvasses-of.html

The composer tells us that In The Light Of Air (2013/14) is a tetralogy of works that together form a
structure of a single piece. The four movements are entitled Luminance, Serenity, Existence and
Remembrance. They are connected by short transitions to form a seamless flow throughout the work. The
musical material is constructed with focus on subtle nuances and poetic textures that form lyrical gestures
throughout the work. Parts of the work are constructed around the idea of each performer being a ‘soloist’
in the setting of a chamber ensemble, in the sense that the performers alternate between traveling through
fields of collective instrumental alliances and moving into soloistic approaches.

The piece was written for the International Contemporary Ensemble and premiered by ICE at the
Reykjavik Arts Festival on May 25th 2014.

Luminance seems to emerge from the air on a long held note around which there are subtle textures, a
beat of a drum as Anna Þorvaldsdóttir creates a real earthy, primeval atmosphere. The music is allowed to
develop through the layering of textures, slowly increasing in dynamics. Pin points of sound appear,
strings slide and bring points of pizzicato. The strings shimmer and glow in this ever changing music.
Piano chords add to the texture and lead to the slowly quietening coda where the atmospheric sounds of
the opening return and we are led straight into Serenity where the piano and strings bring resonant chords.
Percussion add lovely colours as the harp and piano play a descending motif. There are a myriad of light
textured descending phrases before the cello provides a deep resonant anchor to the music as it builds in
richer sonorities. There are many fine little details that subtly add to the colour and texture of this music. I
particularly love the way disparate textures and motifs gently slide into focus and blend together before a
rhythmic pattern takes us into the next movement.

Existence brings deep resonant sounds heaving around in the depths, out of which a viola, then piano
bring a theme. Various instrumental ideas shift around, weaving a rich tapestry lightened by wiry string
phrases as the harp maintains an insistent pulse. There is a lightening of texture as we move
towards Remembrance where percussion add delicate shades of colour to a slowly unwinding string
motif. Soon a more prominent, though delicate, percussion passage arrives before a string line appears
again with gentle piano and harp. The piano gains prominence in a lovely, flowing rippling theme, the
piano slowly gaining in dynamics over a long held string accompaniment. A lovely viola melody takes
the lead to which a deeper cello accompaniment and subtle little instrumental details are added. A variety
of drum sounds arrive as deep string resonances underpin the music. Eventually all falls quieter as the
piano brings a delicate descending motif against string phrases, a point at which the feeling of distant
memory is palpable. Sudden piano chords sound out that themselves grow slowly quieter as, with lovely
string sonorities, we are led to the coda where a distant gentle harp theme brings about the conclusion.

This is a wonderfully cohesive work that is full of subtle colours and textures, brilliantly played by ICE.

The composer tells us that Transitions (2014) explores the theme of man and machine. The music opens
with a wavering cello theme over a side drum before alternating with drum and side drum. As the music
tries to heave itself up there are sudden little harmonic motifs. Soon the cello brings a richer melodic
moment as the music moves ahead slowly. There is a remarkable subtle sense of forward momentum
created. Deeper richer sonorities are developed with short interrupting phrases adding a sense of
movement. These sonorities reach a more flowing passage but it is short lived, the shorter phrases
returning. Drum beats interrupt but the cello moves on, developing a long rich, resonant, undulating
theme. The drums return with alternating short string phrases until a sustained string phrase in held over
the drum taps leading to a kind of resolution in the coda. 

Anna Þorvaldsdóttir’s music is not to be confused with minimalism. She brings so much more to her
slowly unfolding canvasses. My download shows a very fine recording with great detail. 

http://www.secondinversion.org/2015/08/24/album-review-in-the-light-of-air-ice-performs-anna-
thorvaldsdottir/

You could say composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir is a bit of an ice sculptor. No, not the frozen water type of
ice—the musical type of ICE. The Icelandic composer recently collaborated with ICE, the International
Contemporary Ensemble, to create a new four-movement chamber work titled “In the Light of Air.”
And while we’re on the topic of ICE, let it be known that they are not your average ensemble. With a
modular makeup of 35 leading instrumentalists, the group performs contemporary classical music in
forces ranging from solos to large ensembles. In fact, they make it their mission to advance the music of
the 21th century by pioneering new musical works and multimedia strategies for audience engagement.
In 2011 they created ICElab, an innovative new musical project which places teams of ICE musicians in
collaboration with emerging composers to develop works that push the boundaries of the classical genre.
ICE’s latest album, titled “In the Light of Air: ICE Performs Anna Thorvaldsdottir,” is just a single
product of that collaborative project. The album features two gorgeously enigmatic pieces: “In the Light
of Air” for viola, cello, harp, piano, percussion, and electronics, and “Transitions” for solo cello. The
performers on the album are ICE members Kyle Armbrust on viola, Michael Nicolas on cello, Nuiko
Wadden on harp, Cory Smythe on piano, and Nathan Davis on percussion.
The title track is a tetralogy of works that together form a unified structure—the four main movements are
connected by texturally fascinating transitions and framed by a prologue and epilogue. The first
movement is an airy, delicate sound world aptly titled “Luminance.” The percussion and electronics
provide a slowly rumbling bass part beneath a gradually shifting texture of sound materials, melodic
fragments, and harmonies.
The second movement, titled “Serenity,” is an entire ocean of sound: infinitely varied yet beautifully
unified in its ever-changing timbres and textures. The translucent calm sparkles with gorgeous harp
details and gentle piano echoes, the vast and limitless soundscape punctuated with delicate, misty
whispers of simple melodies.
The third movement is much shorter than the rest. Clocking in at less than four minutes, “Existence” is a
slow and pensive journey, each bow stroke in the strings a deliberate, measured step through an
atmospheric sound mass of deep drones and rumbling echoes.
The piece ends with “Remembrance,” a movement which delicately balances the lyrical, long-breathed
melodies of the strings with the harmonic depth of piano and the textural interest of percussion. In fact,
the percussion part features an installation of metallic ornaments which Thorvaldsdottir designed
specifically for use in this particular movement. The ornaments, called Klakabönd (which is Icelandic for
“a bind of ice”), were created by artist Svana Jósepsdóttir.
And if you’re lucky enough to see the piece performed live, there is an additional multimedia component:
“In the Light of Air” incorporates a light constellation that was designed in collaboration with ICE. A
collection of lightbulbs twinkles softly above the musicians during the performance, glowing and
dimming according to the intensity of the music.
The other piece on the album is “Transitions,” which was commissioned by cellist Michael Nicolas in
2014. The single movement work explores the theme of man and machine, both of which are represented
through contrasting cello parts. Nicolas soars through the organic lyricism and expressive melodies of
man while also excelling at the metallic timbres and technical accuracy of machine. Through his sensitive
balance and imaginative interpretation of each role, he showcases the cello’s rich tone, wide pitch range,
and stunning timbral depth.
As a composer, Thorvaldsdottir is known for creating large sonic structures that reveal a vast variety of
sustained sound materials—and both of these pieces are a perfect example of her visionary style.
Throughout the album, her subtle timbral nuances, poetic textures, and lyrical gestures immerse the
listener in austere, somber, and utterly spellbinding soundscapes.
So in the end, Thorvaldsdottir is probably more of a sound sculptor than an ice sculptor—but either way,
she is certainly carving out a name for herself in the contemporary music scene.