Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases Aequora from Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin - Music by Icelandic Composers
Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin
Release New Album Aequora on Sono Luminus
The Duo’s First Recording as Mystery Sonata
Featuring Music by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Daníel Bjarnason, and Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Worldwide Release Date: February 28, 2025
CDs or press downloads, including album booklet, available upon request.
www.minagajic.com | Zachary Carrettin | www.sonoluminus.com
On February 28, 2025, pianist Mina Gajić and violinist Zachary Carrettin will release Aequora on Sono Luminus. The album is inspired by Iceland and the cultural legacy of its music, featuring works by several prominent Icelandic composers, including Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Daníel Bjarnason, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Páll Ragnar Pálsson.
Until the present recording, Mina Gajić and Zachary Carrettin have recorded under their given names, occasionally performing live under the duo’s moniker, especially in non-classical settings presenting a diversity of repertoire and styles. Aequora is the first recording the married duo will release under the name Mystery Sonata, embracing the inherent mystery in presenting contemporary music and new arrangements for the first time. The new album builds on Gajić and Carrettin’s strong recording history with Sono Luminus. The duo’s 2020 album, Boundless featuring Schubert’s Sonatinas, made the Top 10 on The Billboard Classical Chart. In 2022, they released Confluence featuring Balkan dances and Tango Nuevo, described by The Whole Note as “a merging of two different compositional languages, coming from regions that are geographically distanced but complementary with their distinct rhythmicity and melodic flavour.” In April 2024, they released Bach Uncaged alternating the Sonatas of J.S. Bach and John Cage.
Gajić writes, “In our years recording seven albums for Sono Luminus, Zachary and I have marveled at the label’s releases of new orchestral and chamber music composed by Icelanders. Collectively, this music seems to offer an alternate reality, a sound space that is distinct in each work and with each composer, and yet shared, almost as a collective consciousness, or at least a community with similar ideals expressed in music. Zachary and I traveled to Iceland to experience the landscapes and to meet with several composers, exploring their work and observing where the connections between their interests and ours as a duo seemed congruous. María had been wanting to rework her Aequora, adding a violin to the piano and electronics, and Páll had been imagining adapting the harp part for piano in his work Notre Dame. Both turned out to be remarkably successful, and rewarding to study and perform. In exploring works to program alongside these, Anna’s Reminiscence and Daníel’s First Escape worked beautifully – solos complementing the other works while providing refreshing contrast to the duo works. We asked María to create an entirely new work for us with the goal of providing a contemplative environment for the audience, as a shared meditation, a community-building ritual. She composed an utterly gorgeous work, Re/fractions, casting light on what is possible when the intention is, as she so eloquently stated when we first met, ‘to refrain from adding noise to an already noisy world.’”
Aequora for grand piano and electronics by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir was originally commissioned for the Iceland Arts Festival in 2015 by the pianist Árni Heiðar Karlsson. The work is inspired by a text of Anne Carson from her book Nox. In meeting Sigfusdottir, she expressed to Gajić and Carrettin that she had been thinking about adding a texture, an element, a new voice to the composition. She and Carrettin connected in sharing stories of their violin studies and they came to find that many years ago, they both studied with the same great violinist at a summer festival. Not only did Sigfúsdóttir successfully and beautifully create and integrate the violin into this work, she also composed a coda of new material, a melody that seems to exist without pulse and beyond time; it is extraordinarily effective and magical.
Sigfusdottir writes, “The manuscript is hand-written without time signature. The electronic part creates a certain atmosphere and a frame over which the instruments play. The piano part is more fixed and the violin is written as a counterpoint to the other layers, creating tension and release. The piece evolves from uncertainty towards a clearer structure and demands from the performers a close listening and attention to delicate nuances.”
First Escape for solo violin by Daníel Bjarnason was commissioned and first performed by violinist Jennifer Koh in 2018. The composer informed Carrettin of his plan to write a series of “Escapes,” this having been the first. Carrettin writes in the liner notes for First Escape, “Daníel’s piece is brilliantly composed for the violin, utilizing the natural harmonics of the string in the most virtuosic ways. It’s a wonderful contrast to Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s Notre Dame, which explores the expressivity of intonation across the harmonic series in a slow context. In contrast, Daníel uses the harmonics more in the way Paganini is rumored to have used them in the early 19th Century in his performances, achieving large leaps of pitch within a fast sequence. There is a manic quality to the work and yet a clear and intelligible form.”
Notre Dame was originally written in 2021 for an Icelandic duo, Elísabet Waage on harp and Laufey Jónsdóttir on violin. The work explores the many distinct timbres and intonations of a unison pitch as played in various places on the strings, and on various lengths of string. The composer, Páll Ragnar Pálsson wrote, “I was thinking a lot about Notre Dame after the fire. There is a feminine connotation in the name of the church and I perceive the religiousness of it from a motherly aspect. It was a deep shock for the Occident when Notre Dame of Paris burned in 2019. As a joint effort of foresters, carpenters, engineers and benefactors, the roof is now being restored to its original state using materials and methods from the 13th century. The urgency and devotion of this act indicates the significance a building can have for a vast group of people.”
Reminiscence by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir was composed in 2017 in recognition of Democracy 25. This pan-European political movement explores alter-globalization, social ecology, ecofeminism, post-growth, post-capitalism, and universal basic income. Carrettin writes in the liner notes, “In this work for solo piano, Thorvaldsdottir uses specific notation to achieve the most captivating and moving resonances from the instrument, often conjuring mental images and memories of witnessing and experiencing natural phenomena, such as a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, or a storm over the ocean.” However, although Thorvaldsdottir finds inspiration in the musical qualities of nature, as she explained in an interview with NPR, “This has to do with energy and the flow and structure, the nuances and perspectives you can take to zoom into the tiniest detail and zoom out. It's much more about the flow and the energy rather than specific landscapes. It's also not about romanticizing it at all, because nature is also brutal.” Reminiscence is composed in seven short sections, delineated by textural changes requiring different extended techniques on the piano.
Re/fractions, composed in 2023/24 by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, was commissioned by Mystery Sonata and the Boulder Bach Festival in Colorado, where Gajić and Carrettin gave the world premiere in February 2024. Sigfúsdóttir writes, “The piece is inspired by a few different things – space (in the register of the instruments and the actual space between sounds), time (actual tempo and sense of time), and textures. The textures in the piece are often felt by changes of light or color in the tonal quality and chords. The terminology of the word refraction is: the bending of light as it passes from one transparent substance into another. This bending of light by refraction makes it possible for us to have lenses, magnifying glasses, prisms and rainbows. The piece is loosely divided into two parts, fraction 1 and 2, but is at the same time one whole arc of music. The second half of the piece gravitates around the note D and d-minor, which is also referred to as Re.”
About the Artists
Mina Gajić has garnered an international reputation for insightful and dynamic performances of a vast and ever-evolving repertoire including many new works by living composers, concertos and recitals performed on historic Romantic Era pianos, and collaborations on harpsichord and fortepiano. She started her education and music career in Yugoslavia and subsequently performed as concerto soloist and recitalist in Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Montenegro, China, Bolivia, and across the United States. As duo partner with violinist Zachary Carrettin, she has appeared on four continents, focusing on a diverse repertoire spanning the centuries and various styles – on historic period pianos in addition to modern concert instruments, and including new works composed for the duo. Gajić currently serves as Artistic Director of Boulder Bach Festival and COmpass REsonance.
Zachary Carrettin has performed as violinist, violist, cellist da spalla, and conductor in more than twenty-five countries on four continents and has established a reputation for presenting diverse programs which feature repertory from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries – on period, modern, and electric instruments. He has conducted orchestras across the United States, Europe, and South America, resurrecting works from manuscript and presenting world premiere performances of contemporary music. As soloist and music director with Project Bandaloop, he appeared at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts Face of America Series, the Stavanger Festival (Norway), and in a private concert for the Sultan and Royal Family of Oman, in Muscat, performing original music on electric violin. Carrettin currently serves as Music Director of Boulder Bach Festival and COmpass REsonance.
Track List:
Aequora
Mystery Sonata: Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin
Recorded at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce VA
August 6-9, 2023 & February 26-29, 2024
[1] Aequora [10:01]
Composed by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
[2] First Escape [4:26]
Composed by Daníel Bjarnason
[3-4] Notre Dame
1. La Tour Nord [5:49]
2. La Tour Sud [3:52]
Composed by Páll Ragnar Pálsson
[5] Reminiscence [7:53]
Composed by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir
[6-7] Re/fractions
I. [5:38]
II. [4:24]
Composed by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
Total Time: 42:08
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Producer: Dan Merceruio
Recording Engineer: Daniel Shores
Mixing & Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Editing Engineer: Dan Merceruio
Piano Technician: John Veitch
Cover/Bio Photography: Heather Gray
Textural Photography: Collin J. Rae
Liner Notes: Zachary Carrettin
Design & Layout: Joshua Frey