Event info

Composers Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir, Þórunn Björnsdóttir, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson and Gunnar Karel Másson have written music especially for Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir and Heiða Árnadóttir. These compositions travel through electric atmosphere, emotions of serenity, imitation, desperation towards the central stage.

Þóranna Björnsdóttir will participate in the performance of her piece Scent & Sound games (Ilm- og ómleikar).

Programme
Scent & Sound games by Þóranna Björnsdóttir
Spirit III - Reset for voice and harmonium by Þórunn Björsdóttir
Songs of Violence/Songs of Despair by Gunnar Karel Másson, for voice, toy piano, and prepared piano.
Mamma pikkar á tölvu sumarið 1988 for toy piano by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, is inspired by a little poem about youth.
Adibaran Ocirebal is a solo opera for voice and electronics by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson.

Performers
Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir is a concert pianist with a broad experience in new music having premiered numerous works written especially for her. She is active in the Icelandic experimental music scene working on a regular basis with Icelandic composers along with solo works with artists including Helmut Lachenmann, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Peter Ablinger, Morton Subotnick, Cory Arcangel and Mme Yvonne-Loriod Messiaen. 21st century music is her passion. Prepared piano, electronics, toy piano, theatre pieces and performance works often show up on her programs. In recent years Tinna has been active as a performance artist, making installations, soundscapes and performance works with materials like piano parts, her own brainwaves, hot and cold glass and electronic music.

The singer Heiða Árnadóttir is the local artist of the Dark Music Days festival 2020-2022. In her career she has emphasized the performance of modern music, folk, jazz, experimental, as well as lieder. She has premiered many works by Icelandic composers such as Gunnar Karel Másson, Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir, Hafsteinn Þórólfsson, Þórunn Björsdóttir, and Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson.
In addition to numerous concerts in Iceland where Heiða has premiered compositions with Ensemble Adapter and Caput, she has performed in Holland, Belgium, France, India, Sweden and Denmark. Heiða performs regularly in festivals including Nordic Music Days, Iceland Airwaves, Skálholt Summer Festival, Siglufjörður Folk Festival, Reykjavík Jazz Festival and a range of foreign festivals.
Heiða’s performance as a singer/songwriter in the band Mogil has produced the release of four CDs. Their CD Ró was nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards in 2008, and their newest CD Adventa , based on Gunnar Gunnarsson´s famous novel of the same name, was issued by the German publishing company Winter and Winter in 2019.

The composers
Gunnar Karel Másson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1984. He started studying music at an early age and has played a diverse range of instruments. His focus is writing chamber music for intimate venues. Additionally Gunnar Karel is making his mark as concert producer. He founded the Sonic festival in Copenhagen with Filip C. de Melo in 2012 and is one of the curators for the Peripheriberry group. Previously Gunnar Karel was the Artistic Director of Dark Music Days in Reykjavik from 2016 – 2020. Recently he has taken the position as the project manager of a Nordic collaborative project, Platform GA´TT, for the Reykjavik Arts Festival.
Gunnar Karel is a member of Danish Composers Society, the theatre group 16 elskendur, and the Icelandic composers collective S.L.A´.T.U.R. He studied composition in Iceland and Denmark with Tryggvi Baldvinsson, Dr. U´lfar Ingi Haraldsson, Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen, Juliana Hodkinson, Jeppe Just Christensen and Niels Rosing Schow.

Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir is a sound and visual artist based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She studied music from an early age and graduated as a classical pianist. Þóranna immediately turned to the field of contemporary interdisciplinary art. A graduate of the Royal Academy of art in The Hague, Netherlands, Þóranna has worked as a video and performance artist in the electroacoustic field exploring the use of different mediums, realizing her work through film, performances, and installations. She works as a sound and performance artist with Wunderland creating experiences, performances, and workshops.

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson's musical thinking is based on a rhythmical system that transcends the boundaries of pulse and traditional notation. This is often represented in his works through animated notation; that is screening musical symbols on a computer monitor.
His music has been performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Adapter, Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble l'Arsenale, Tøyen Fil og Klafferi, Defun Ensemble, Aksiom Ensemble and Nordic Affect as well as soloists such as Timo Kinnunen, Matthias Ziegler, Roberto Durante and Georgia Browne.
Some of the festivals that have included Guðmundur's music are Tectonics in Reykjavík and Glasgow, Transit Festival, November Music, Time of Music (Musikin Aika), Music for People and Thingamajigs, MATA, Nordlichter Biennale, Timisoara International Music Festival and ISSTC 2014 in Maynooth Ireland, where Guðmundur was a Keynote speaker.
Guðmundur Steinn studied musical composition at Mills College in Oakland, California and Iceland Academy of the Arts and at summer courses in Kürten and Darmstädt. He has been active in the composer collective S.L.Á.T.U.R. in Iceland and taken part in its festival Sláturtíð, the Jaðarber concert series. As a performer he plays with Fengjastrútur Ensemble and directs his own small ensemble, Fersteinn.

Þórunn Björnsdóttir (1971) studied music and visual arts in Reykjavík and the Netherlands. She is an avid recorder teacher and performer in addition to publishing poetry. As a composer, Þórunn has composed music for dance, various instrument settings, and electronic performance. Her compositions often have a strong performative aspect evident in the performances and installations in her repertoire. The thematic focus is to portray a strong sense of the actions and notions of everyday life. Þórunn’s works constantly test the boundaries between the personal and the public. Her works have been performed both in Iceland and other European countries.