Event info

Herdís Anna Jónasdóttir soprano and Eva Þyri Hilmarsdóttir pianist will sing and play music by Debussy, Kurt Weill, Gershwin and last but not least Leonard Bernstein, whose 100 year anniversary we're celebrating in 2018.

HERDÍS ANNA
Herdís Anna Jónasdóttir was born in Ísafjörður, Iceland where she studied piano, violin and singing from an early age. In 2003 she continued her music studies, majoring in singing at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik and graduated with a B.Mus. degree in 2006. Herdís continued her studies at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin where she graduated with a diploma in 2010 and finished her Konzertexamen in 2013. Then Herdís spent one year at the International Opera Studio at the Opera in Zürich, where she worked with artists such as Fabio Luisi, Ivor Bolton, Andreas Homoki, Brigitte Fassbaender, Luana de Vol and others.

Herdís has taken part in many opera productions in Iceland, Germany and Switzerland. Her operatic roles include Adina (L'elisir d'amore), Despina (Cosi fan tutte), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), The Queen of Schemacha (The Golden Cockerel), Sophie (Werther), Nannetta (Falstaff), Oscar (A Masked ball), Romilda (Xerxes) and Musetta (La Boheme). She has received great praise for the operatic roles of Adele (The Bat) and Mabel(Pirates of Penzance), as well as the musical roles of Maria (West Side Story) and Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady).

Herdís has given solo recitals in Iceland and in Germany and also been very active on the concert stage, performing with e.g. at the Carl Orff Festival, with The Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra, The Saarland State Orchestra, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra in Australia and The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. 2013-18 Herdís Anna was engaged as a solo singer at the Saarland State Theatre in Saarbrücken, Germany.

EVA ÞYRI
After graduating from the Reykjavík College of Music, Eva Þyri Hilmarsdóttir furthered her studies in Denmark at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, receiving an Advanced Soloist Diploma, and in The Royal Academy of Music in London, where she graduated with a Distinction and was awarded a DipRAM and the Christian Carpenter Piano Prize for an outstanding final recital.
Her teachers were Thorsteinn Gauti Sigurdsson, Halldor Haraldsson, Prof. John Damgaard and Michael Dussek.

Aside from giving solo recitals, Eva Thyri takes an avid interest in chamber music and lied and has given numerous first performances of Icelandic and foreign compositions, appearing in festvals such as Dark Music Days in Reykjavik, Ung Nordisk Musik, Young Euro Classic Festival in Berlin and Young Composers Symposium, London. She also participated in over one hundred recitals dedicated to Icelandic music in the series Pearls of Icelandic song in Harpa concert house.

In 2017 Eva Þyri participated in The Icelandic Opera’s production of La Voix Humaine by Poulenc, and in December 2018 she and Erla Dóra Vogler mezzosoprano will release a cd with works for solo voice and piano by Jórunn Viðar, in celebration of her 100th birthday.