Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 Season Highlights - Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich Creative Chair, Performances in at Least 17 Countries; World Premiere of New Cello Concerto

Photo by Anna Maggy. High resolution photos available here.

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 Season Highlights

2024-2025 Creative Chair of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

2024-2025 CHANEL Next Prize Winner

World Premiere of New Cello Concerto by Johannes Moser and the San Francisco Symphony in May 2025

Continued Country and Local Premieres of Major Orchestral Works METACOSMOS, AIŌN, CATAMORPHOSIS, ARCHORA

CATAMORPHOSIS Returns to the Berlin Philharmonie in February 2025

Performances in at Least 17 Countries 

Forthcoming Album on Sono Luminus: Ubique
Release Date: February 28, 2025

“[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance” – The Times

Schedule: www.annathorvalds.com/performances 

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and striking sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. The Guardian reports, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 season (September 2024 to June 2025) includes performances of her music across at least seventeen countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Her current schedule is available on her website and will be updated with additional performances throughout the year. 

Anna has been appointed the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair for the 2024-2025 season. Since 2015, the orchestra has invited a composer to hold this position each season, including, formerly, Arvo Pärt, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Toshio Hosokawa, among others. From September 2024 to June 2025, a wide variety of Anna’s music will be performed, ranging from string quartets to large orchestral pieces. The season-opening concerts in September featured ARCHORA, conducted by music director Paavo Järvi. Two of Anna’s orchestral works will receive their Swiss premieres – CATAMORPHOSIS at the Sonic Matter Festival Zurich conducted by André de Ridder on November 29 and METACOSMOS conducted by Eva Ollikainen on April 3 and 4.

Additionally, Anna continues her two-year period as one of ten CHANEL Next Prize winners. The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Each artist embodies CHANEL’s mission to advance the new and the next and receives €100,000 in funding, allowing them to fully realize their most ambitious artistic projects. The NEXT Prize was established in 2021 as part of the CHANEL Culture Fund, CHANEL’s global initiative to accelerate the ideas that advance culture, extending the House’s century-long legacy of cultural patronage.

A major highlight of the 2024-2025 concert season is the world premiere of Anna’s new cello concerto by the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Dalia Stasevska from May 15 to 17. Written for Johannes Moser and titled Before we fall, the new concerto is co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Odense Symphony Orchestra. Additional country premieres will be announced. 

Anna’s other large orchestral works METACOSMOS (2017), AIŌN (2018), CATAMORPHOSIS (2020), and ARCHORA (2022) continue to receive country and local premieres as well as repeat performances throughout the world:

METACOSMOS will be performed at least six times this season, by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ollikainen (October 3); Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tabita Berglund (November 13); Houston Symphony conducted by Berglund (January 24 to 26); Dresdner Philharmonie conducted by Bergland (January 31 and February 2); La Jolla Symphony conducted by Arian Khaefi (March 15 and 16); and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by Ollikainen (Swiss premiere, April 3 and 4). METACOSMOS was premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2018 and in Europe by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert in January 2019. The Boston Globe reported, “There is possibly no other composer working today who is so adept at channeling the massive forces of nature, and given a full orchestral sound palette to play with, [Thorvaldsdottir] goes wild. Writing lines that ride the knife edge of order and chaos and giving poetic but direct suggestions to the musicians, she immerses listeners in eerie, irresistible landscapes of sound.”

AIŌN received its Finnish premiere in performances by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta led by Dalia Stasevska on September 12 and 13. Simultaneously, the piece was performed in Germany on September 13 by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin led by Lee Reynolds. AIŌN was commissioned by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece, The New York Times wrote, “Among the many wonders of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music – exquisitely honed timbres, an intricate play of shadow and light – perhaps the most mysterious is the way it can sound so static yet be in a state of constant (if sometimes glacial) change … This craftsmanship – a meticulous fusion of pacing, structure and coloring – is also at work in the three-movement AIŌN … Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener.”

CATAMORPHOSIS will have its Swiss premiere by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by André de Ridder on November 29, with additional performances this season by the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Jamie Martin on January 4 at the Barbican, January 5 at Warwick Arts Centre, and January 6 at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. As part of the Berliner Philharmoniker's 2025 Biennale, the piece returns to the Berlin Philharmonie, this time performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Nicholas Collon on February 16. It will also be performed this spring by the Berner Symphonieorchester led by Anna Sułkowska-Migoń on April 3 and 4 and by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra led by Ollikainen on May 22. CATAMORPHOSIS, premiered in 2021, was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece The Guardian reported, “Thorvaldsdottir’s impressive new work was detailed and powerful ... Lasting around 20 minutes, it’s a single movement of restrained power, a continuum of shifting, colliding layers of sound, which are minutely detailed in the score yet manage to seem simultaneously massive and delicate as they move from dense chromaticism to moments of almost lucid tonality ... this scrupulously prepared and wonderfully performed premiere showed that it’s a piece that stands entirely on its own feet, creating an utterly convincing musical world.” 

ARCHORA was performed by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich during their season-opening concerts and the start of Anna’s residency as Creative Chair with the orchestra, from September 18 to 20. That same week on September 19, the Odense Symphony Orchestra led by Eva Ollikainen performed the work. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal led by Dalia Stasevska gives the Canadian premiere of ARCHORA on January 22 and 23. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz, and was premiered in August 2022 at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Ollikainen in a concert selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.

In addition, Anna’s string octet Illumine was performed on tour throughout Australia by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in September, as well as by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in Oslo on October 15. It will be featured in performances by Boston chamber orchestra A Far Cry on March 28 and 29. Commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Anna writes in her note for the piece that it is, “based on the notion of dawn and the relationship between light and darkness.”

Anna’s string quartet Enigma will be performed by Ensemble ö! at the Atelier für Kunst und Philosophie in Zürich on October 20, and will receive its German premiere performed by the PULSE string quartet at Galerie Rabus in Bremen on October 27. Of the piece, which was commissioned by Spektral Quartet, Carnegie Hall, and Washington Performing Arts, NPR reported, “Describing Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Enigma – her first string quartet – is not easy, but imagine you’re suspended in some primordial gas cloud where matter is transforming, regenerating, building toward the birth of a planet.” Spektral Quartet’s recording of Enigma on Sono Luminus was named on both NPR’s and The New York Times’ best of 2021 lists. 

Anna’s large ensemble piece Aequilibria will be performed by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra at the University of Oslo’s Aula on November 19. Aequilibria was commissioned by BIT20 Ensemble and recorded by International Contemporary Ensemble on Sono Luminus. The Wall Street Journal writes of the piece, “A cello drone gives way to busy, distant-sounding string and wind passages; brass writing moves between ominous, sustained tone, textured buzzing and Wagnerian heft, and a mournful alto flute line hovers briefly over a bleak ensemble texture. Shortly before the piece ends, unexpected percussion bursts and delicate piano tracery push the music toward an eerie landscape – a musical equivalent of magical realism.”

Notable festival performances of Anna’s music this season include Nordic Music Days in Glasgow (October 30) and at the 2025 Ojai Music Festival (June). For her complete performance calendar, visit www.annathorvalds.com/performances.

The 2024-2025 season also brings a new album featuring Anna’s evening-length chamber work Ubique, which will be released worldwide on Sono Luminus on February 28. The 50-minute piece was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Pnea Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, and Kurt Chauviere for Claire Chase’s Claire Chase’s Density project. The world premiere was given in May 2023 at Carnegie Hall, performed by Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; Cory Smythe, piano; and Levy Lorenzo, live sound. The same musicians have recorded the new album, and will perform its West Coast premiere at the Ojai Festival in California on June 7. Anna writes of the piece, “Ubique lives on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion. Through a combination of sounds, pitches, and textural nuances, low deep drones envelop lyrical materials and harmonies that breathe in and out of focus throughout the progress of the piece. The flow of the music is primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction — of various kinds and durations — as it streams with subtle interruptions and frictions but ever moving forward in the overall structure.”

All of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral music and many of her other works are recorded on the Sono Luminus label, and featured on Apple Music’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir Essentials Playlist.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is frequently performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Her “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy. Anna was Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2018-2023, and was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego, and is currently based in the London area.

The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is published by Chester Music, part of Wise Music Group.

For more information about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com/bio

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir Announced as a Winner of the CHANEL Next Prize

Photo courtesy of CHANEL, available in high resolution here.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir Announced as a Winner of the CHANEL Next Prize

One of Ten Artists Awarded

“[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance” – The Times

“Thorvaldsdottir's natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.” – The Guardian

More Information About the CHANEL Next Prize

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: CHANEL Next Prize Profile

www.annathorvalds.com

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has been selected as one of the ten winners of the CHANEL Next Prize, the second edition of the House’s international arts and culture prize, announced by the CHANEL Culture Fund. Jurors of the 2024 edition include actress Tilda Swinton, artist Cao Fei, and curators Legacy Russell and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Each artist embodies CHANEL’s mission to advance the new and the next. Each of the ten prize winners will receive €100,000 in funding, allowing them to fully realize their most ambitious artistic projects. 

The NEXT Prize was established in 2021 as part of the CHANEL Culture Fund, CHANEL’s global initiative to accelerate the ideas that advance culture, extending the House’s century-long legacy of cultural patronage. 

Yana Peel, the Global Head of Arts & Culture at CHANEL, says: “The CHANEL Next Prize was founded to amplify the work of artists who are making a difference and redefining their discipline. Each is a catalyst and a pioneer. Each is disrupting established practice in their field, from art and opera to cinema and game design. Watching their creative journeys will be thrilling.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir says: “It is such an honor to receive the CHANEL Next Prize from this iconic and monumental institution. It is a true pleasure to be one of the awarded artists in this wide-ranging recognition of various art forms from around the world. The prize shines an important and distinctive light on diverse fields within the arts and shows unequivocal commitment to the support of the arts and culture into the future."

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and "riveting" (The Times) sound world has made her “a leading voice in contemporary music” (The Guardian). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times.

Anna’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least twenty-one countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Slovenia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Her current schedule is available on her website.

This season also brings the world premiere of Anna’s major new installation piece METAXIS by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on June 1, 2024 at Harpa, part of the opening celebration of the 2024 Reykjavík Arts Festival and of the festival's collaboration with Harpa and the ISO. Anna describes METAXIS as, “an installation for deconstructed orchestra and space.” Audiences will have the unique opportunity to explore the music from different perspectives, as they wander through Harpa’s iconic foyer and feel how their experience of the music changes with every step. The musicians will be spread out over the different levels of the building, blending together in myriad ways and creating a unique sound world with innumerable textures. The piece is half an hour in length and will be conducted by Eva Ollikainen.

Anna’s music is widely recorded, and all of her orchestral works are available on the Sono Luminus label. Most recently, Sono Luminus released Anna’s latest portrait album, ARCHORA / AIŌN, which was recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen. The album was chosen as one of the best of 2023 by The Boston Globe, NPR, and The New York Times. The label’s previous releases include CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques in 2023; METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020. Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.

Anna’s work is frequently performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Anna’s “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy.

Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra 2018-2023, Anna was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego, and is currently based in the London area.

The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is published by Chester Music, part of Wise Music Group. 

Website: annathorvalds.com
Instagram: @annathorvalds
Facebook: @annathorvaldsdottirmusic
X: @annathorvalds

About the CHANEL Culture Fund

Extending a century of commitment to the arts, the CHANEL Culture Fund fosters a vibrant network of creators and innovators to advance the ideas that shape culture worldwide. 

Core programmes include CHANEL’s Art Partners, institutions whose leaders seek to collaborate on ground-breaking, long-term initiatives that bring innovation to the cultural landscape. The CHANEL Next Prize celebrates artists and accelerates their future successes through access to resources and mentorship. And the podcast CHANEL Connects amplifies the voices of thought-leaders across disciplines, generations, and geographies – tackling the defining issues of our time.

From emerging curators at the MCA Chicago to leading ecologists at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, from game-changing artists at the Venice Biennale to the brightest directors at the British Film Institute, the CHANEL Culture Fund champions creative audacity for a better future.

April 18-20: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA in Boston Premiere Performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Photo by Saga Sigurdardottir available in high resolution at www.annathorvalds.com/photos

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA
in Boston Premiere Performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Andris Nelsons

April 18-20, 2024 | Symphony Hall | 301 Massachusetts Ave. | Boston, MA
Tickets & Information

“The energy that inspires the Icelandic composer’s colossus doesn’t feel of this Earth, but rather an internal combustion – we are the sublime composite of everything. Low, bellowing brass and woodwinds drone as flutes carry our light forward. Monumental music that feels rigorously intimate.” – Lars Gotrich, NPR, on ARCHORA 

“Thorvaldsdottir’s music partakes of deep, primordial textures and a mysterious sense of structure and flow.” – David Weininger, The Boston Globe, on ARCHORA 

First Commercial Recording of ARCHORA is Available Now on Sono Luminus
Chosen as One of the Best Albums of 2023 by NPR, The Boston Globe, & The New York Times
Press downloads available upon request. 

Read a Q&A with Anna about ARCHORA from Wise Music Classical

Boston, MA – Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s latest major orchestral work, ARCHORA, will receive its Boston premiere performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons in concerts on April 18 at 7:30pm, April 19 at 1:30pm, and April 20 at 8pm, at Symphony Hall. The program also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 and Brahms’ Violin Concerto with guest soloist Hilary Hahn.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “riveting” (The Times) sound world has made her “a leading voice in contemporary music” (The Guardian). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times in its review of ARCHORA.

ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." The premiere was selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022. 

ARCHORA is featured on Anna’s latest portrait album, ARCHORA / AIŌN, which was recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen and released on the Sono Luminus label. The album was chosen as one of the best of 2023 by The Boston Globe, NPR, and The New York Times. (Press downloads available upon request). 

Anna writes of ARCHORA:

The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centres around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The piece revolves around the extremes on the spectrum between the Primordia and its resulting afterglow – and the conflict between these elements that are nevertheless fundamentally one and the same. The halo emerges from the Primordia but they have both lost perspective and the connection to one another, experiencing themselves individually as opposing forces rather than one and the same. As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such – it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece.

All of Anna’s orchestral music is now available on Sono Luminus. In addition to ARCHORA / AIŌN, in spring 2023 the label released Anna’s major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques, conducted by Daníel Bjarnason. Sono Luminus’s previous releases include METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020.

Anna’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least sixteen countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Slovenia. Her current schedule is available on her website.

More about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy, as well as commissions by many of the world’s top orchestras. CATAMORPHOSIS was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in January 2021, following the orchestra’s European premiere of METACOSMOS with Alan Gilbert in 2019. CATAMORPHOSIS received its UK premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot in June 2022, with the US premiere with the New York Philharmonic and Santtu-Matias Rouvali taking place in January 2023. ARCHORA - the latest addition to Anna’s “ever-growing and ever more essential catalogue of orchestral pieces” (BBC Radio 3) - was premiered at the BBC Proms in August 2022, by the BBC Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen. The work received its US premiere with the LA Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen in May 2023. And “while [she] has made the symphony orchestra her own,” according to Gramophone magazine, “her chamber music is cut from the same cloth and somehow sounds with much the same combination of immensity and intimacy.” Anna’s recent string quartet Enigma was recorded and released by Sono Luminus in August 2021, performed by the Spektral Quartet, and was one of the New York Times’s recordings of the year (“a masterly entrance to the genre”). Portrait albums with Anna’s works have appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, Sono Luminus, and Innova.

Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations – such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Among the many other orchestras and ensembles that have performed her music include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Quatuor Bozzini, BBC Singers, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Portrait concerts with Anna’s music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including Wigmore Hall, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, London’s Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester’s Nachtmusic der Moderne series, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s Point Festival. Other prominent venues and festivals include the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, London’s Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Darmstadt Summer Course, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Helsinki’s Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. 

Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. Invited lectures and presentations include Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra 2018-2023, Anna was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego.

For more information: www.annathorvalds.com

Jan 24-25: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA in French Premiere by the Orchestre de Paris Conducted by Klaus Mäkelä

Photo by Saga Sigurdardottir available in high resolution at www.annathorvalds.com/photos

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Major Orchestral Work ARCHORA
in French Premiere Performances by the Orchestre de Paris
Conducted by Klaus Mäkelä at Philharmonie de Paris

“Thorvaldsdottir a vraiment un style à elle, reconnaissable et renouvelé” – Le Monde

“Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”
– The Guardian

January 24 and 25, 2024 at 8pm
Philharmonie de Paris | 221 Av. Jean Jaurès, 75019, Paris
Tickets & Information

First Commercial Recording of ARCHORA is Available Now on Sono Luminus
Press downloads available upon request.

Schedule: www.annathorvalds.com/performances 

Read a Q&A with Anna about ARCHORA from Wise Music Classical

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s latest major orchestral work, ARCHORA, will receive its French premiere performances by the Orchestre de Paris (a co-commissioner of the work) conducted by Klaus Mäkelä in concerts on January 24 and 25, 2024 at 8pm, at the Philharmonie de Paris. The program also includes Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with guest soloist Daniil Trifonov and Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “riveting” (The Times) sound world has made her “a leading voice in contemporary music” (The Guardian). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times in its review of ARCHORA.

ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." The premiere was selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.

ARCHORA is featured on Anna’s latest portrait album, ARCHORA / AIŌN, which was recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen and released on the Sono Luminus label. (Press downloads available upon request).

Anna writes of ARCHORA:

The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centres around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The piece revolves around the extremes on the spectrum between the Primordia and its resulting afterglow – and the conflict between these elements that are nevertheless fundamentally one and the same. The halo emerges from the Primordia but they have both lost perspective and the connection to one another, experiencing themselves individually as opposing forces rather than one and the same. As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such – it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece.

All of Anna’s orchestral music is now available on Sono Luminus. In addition to ARCHORA / AIŌN, in spring 2023 the label released Anna’s major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques, conducted by Daníel Bjarnason. Sono Luminus’s previous releases include METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020.

Anna’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least sixteen countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Slovenia. Her current schedule is available on her website.

More about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy, as well as commissions by many of the world’s top orchestras. CATAMORPHOSIS was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in January 2021, following the orchestra’s European premiere of METACOSMOS with Alan Gilbert in 2019. CATAMORPHOSIS received its UK premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot in June 2022, with the US premiere with the New York Philharmonic and Santtu-Matias Rouvali taking place in January 2023. ARCHORA - the latest addition to Anna’s “ever-growing and ever more essential catalogue of orchestral pieces” (BBC Radio 3) - was premiered at the BBC Proms in August 2022, by the BBC Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen. The work received its US premiere with the LA Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen in May 2023. And “while [she] has made the symphony orchestra her own,” according to Gramophone magazine, “her chamber music is cut from the same cloth and somehow sounds with much the same combination of immensity and intimacy.” Anna’s recent string quartet Enigma was recorded and released by Sono Luminus in August 2021, performed by the Spektral Quartet, and was one of the New York Times’s recordings of the year (“a masterly entrance to the genre”). Portrait albums with Anna’s works have appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, Sono Luminus, and Innova.

Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations – such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Among the many other orchestras and ensembles that have performed her music include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Quatuor Bozzini, BBC Singers, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Portrait concerts with Anna’s music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including Wigmore Hall, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, London’s Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester’s Nachtmusic der Moderne series, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s Point Festival. Other prominent venues and festivals include the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, London’s Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Darmstadt Summer Course, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Helsinki’s Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. 

Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. Invited lectures and presentations include Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Anna is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra - in 2023, she is also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego.

For more information: www.annathorvalds.com

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2023-2024 Season Includes Performances in Over 16 Countries

Photo by Anna Maggý available in high resolution at www.annathorvalds.com/photos

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2023-2024 Season Includes Landmark Performances by Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Continued Premieres of ARCHORA, Performances in at Least 16 Countries

“Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”
– The Guardian

Double Concert by Iceland Symphony Orchestra in Reykjavik
 Led by Chief Conductor Eva Ollikainen

October 5 at Harpa Concert Hall: AIŌN
October 6 at Hallgrímskirkja: METACOSMOS, ARCHORA, Heyr þú oss himnum á, Ad Genua
Information: https://en.sinfonia.is/concerts-tickets/archora-1

Upcoming highlights include ARCHORA performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester, on October 14; French premiere by the Orchestre de Paris on January 24 and 25; Swiss premiere by Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne on February 7 and 8; Danish premiere by Aarhus Symphony Orchestra on February 29; and US East Coast premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 18-20

Anna’s major new installation piece METAXIS will be premiered by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at Harpa on June 1, 2024, as part of the opening celebration of the Reykjavík Arts Festival

Plus performances at the Southbank Centre, King’s Place, Beijing Music Festival, and by orchestras including the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and more

Schedule: www.annathorvalds.com/performances 

Latest Album Available Now on Sono Luminus: ARCHORA / AIŌN
Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Eva Ollikainen
Press downloads available upon request.

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “riveting” (The Times) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. “Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener,” reports The New York Times.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2023-2024 season (September 2023 to June 2024) includes performances of her music across at least sixteen countries, including Iceland, England, Ireland, China, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Slovenia. Her current schedule is available on her website and will be updated with additional performances throughout the year.

Up next, Anna’s concert season includes milestone performances on October 5 and 6, 2023 in Reykjavik by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, where Anna is Composer-in-Residence. On October 5, the ISO performs her symphony-scale AIŌN at Harpa Concert Hall, and on October 6, the orchestra presents a portrait concert of her work at Hallgrímskirkja that includes METACOSMOS, ARCHORA, Heyr þú oss himnum á, and Ad Genua, with the Choir of Hallgrímskirkja conducted by Steinar Logi Helgason, and soloist Bryndís Guðjónsdóttir. Both concerts will be led by ISO Chief Conductor Eva Ollikainen.

A major highlight of this season is continued premiere performances of Anna’s latest major orchestral work ARCHORA, from 2022. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz, and was premiered in August 2022 at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Ollikainen in a concert selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.

This season, the Swedish premiere of ARCHORA took place on September 21 and 22, performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eva Ollikainen. Upcoming performances include the Manchester premiere by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ollikainen on October 14; the French premiere of the piece by the Orchestre de Paris, a co-commissioner of the work, led by Klaus Mäkelä on January 24 and 25, 2024; the Swiss premiere by the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne conducted by Ollikainen on February 7 and 8; the Danish premiere by the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra led by Ollikainen on February 29; and the US East Coast premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Andris Nelsons from April 18-20, 2024. 

These performances follow the May 2023 release on Sono Luminus of the ISO’s recording of ARCHORA and AIŌN, conducted by Ollikainen. In April 2023, Sono Luminus also released her major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS as part of the album Atmospheriques, conducted by Daníel Bjarnason. With these recordings, all of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral music is now available on Sono Luminus. The label’s previous releases include METACOSMOS in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020.

This season also brings the world premiere of Anna’s major new installation piece METAXIS by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on June 1, 2024 at Harpa, part of the opening celebration of the 2024 Reykjavík Arts Festival and of the festival's collaboration with Harpa and the ISO. Anna describes METAXIS as, “an installation for deconstructed orchestra and space.” Audiences will have the unique opportunity to explore the music from different perspectives, as they wander through Harpa’s iconic foyer and feel how their experience of the music changes with every step. The musicians and the electronics will be spread out over the different levels of the building, blending together in myriad ways and creating a unique sound world with innumerable textures. The piece is half an hour in length and will be conducted by Eva Ollikainen.

In addition to the BBC Philharmonic’s performance of ARCHORA mentioned above, highlights of the season in England, where Anna is now based, include the Aurora Orchestra performing Anna’s string octet Illumine on October 8 at Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden and on October 11 at the Southbank Centre in London. Commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Anna writes in her note for the piece that it is, “based on the notion of dawn and the relationship between light and darkness.” Aurora Orchestra will also perform Anna’s chamber piece In the Light of Air on November 25 at King’s Place in London. On April 27, 2024 the City of Birmingham Orchestra will perform Dreaming in a concert conducted by Gergely Madaras at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. Gramophone describes Dreaming as, “an imposing monolith that emerges from silence and recedes back into it, speaking of natural desolation, severe beauty and precarious tectonics in between.”

Anna’s music will also be performed throughout the United States and Canada during the season. In Boston, in addition to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s East Coast premiere of ARCHORA mentioned above, Claire Chase and ensemble will perform Ubique, commissioned by and premiered at Carnegie Hall in May 2023, at Harvard University on October 18. The chamber orchestra A Far Cry will perform Illumine on February 17 and 18, 2024. On March 10, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players perform Spectra at Jordan Hall. In New York, Blackbox Ensemble will perform Anna’s chamber piece Ró at the Noguchi Museum on November 8. On April 8, AXIOM ensemble will perform Hrím for chamber orchestra led by Jeffrey Millarsky at The Juilliard School. On the West Coast, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra conducted by Daniel Stewart will perform METACOSMOS on November 19. METACOSMOS was premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2018 and in Europe by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert in January 2019. The Boston Globe reported, “There is possibly no other composer working today who is so adept at channeling the massive forces of nature, and given a full orchestral sound palette to play with, [Thorvaldsdottir] goes wild. Writing lines that ride the knife edge of order and chaos and giving poetic but direct suggestions to the musicians, she immerses listeners in eerie, irresistible landscapes of sound.” Other performances of Anna’s music will take place across the country in cities including Nashville, TN; Flagstaff, AZ; Boulder, CO; Austin, TX; Juneau, AK, and more. In Canada, CATAMORPHOSIS was performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Otto Tausk, on September 15 and 16, 2023. Additional performances of Anna's work will take place in Montreal.

In addition to the Orchestre de Paris’s and Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne’s premieres of ARCHORA mentioned above, European performances include in Germany the Kammerakademie Potsdam Modern Ensemble performing Illumine on October 25, 2023; the Beethoven Orchester Bonn conducted by Dirk Kaftan performing Anna’s major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS on October 27; the Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg conducted by Cornelius Meister performing METACOSMOS on April 4 and 5, 2024; the Frankfurt Radio Symphony performing METACOSMOS conducted by Alain Altinoglu at Alter Oper in Frankfurt on June 13 and 14; and Aeriality performed by the Pfalzphilharmonie Kaiserslautern conducted by Daniele Squeo on June 16 and 17, 2024. In Switzerland, Aeriality will be performed on January 25, 2024 by Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, conducted by Modestas Pitrenas. The Danish String Quartet continues touring Anna’s most recent string quartet Rituals, described by The New York Times as an, “entrancing series of permutations in which a set of musical gestures are rearranged like matter,” with performances at the Musikgebouw in Amsterdam on September 16, 2023; at National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland on September 28; and at Flagey’s Studio 4 in Brussels on October 13. Additional performances of Anna’s music will take place in Vienna, Austria and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This autumn in China, Illumine will be performed by the Mahler Foundation Festival Orchestra conducted by John Warner at the Beijing Music Festival on October 13, 2023.

In the Nordic countries, in addition to the Swedish and Danish premieres of ARCHORA and the premiere of METAXIS in Iceland mentioned above, in Denmark on November 15, 2023 the Danish Sinfonietta performs Illumine in Randers. In Sweden, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali performs CATAMORPHOSIS on March 13 and 14, 2024. The Hehku Ensemble performs For it will never return for tenor and harp on May 18 in Gothenburg Concert Hall. On May 30, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra performs METACOSMOS conducted by Fabien Gabel at Malmö Live Concert Hall. In Finland this spring, CATAMORPHOSIS will be performed on April 26 by the Tampere Philharmonic conducted by Matthew Hall and on May 31 by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon in Helsinki. CATAMORPHOSIS, premiered in 2021, was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece The Times reported, “[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance and considerable power from the steady collision, growth and mutation of precisely imagined sounds and textures.”

For more information about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com/bio

Anna Thorvaldsdottir's new portrait album - ARCHORA and AIŌN - out on Sono Luminus May 26

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA / AIŌN

Recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra
Led by Chief Conductor Eva Ollikainen

Release Date: May 26, 2023
Sono Luminus

US Premiere of ARCHORA: Los Angeles Philharmonic, May 11-14
UK Premiere of AIŌN: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Aldeburgh Festival, June 16

“Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”
– The Guardian

www.annathorvalds.com | www.en.sinfonia.is | www.sonoluminus.com

On Friday, May 26, 2023, Sono Luminus releases a new portrait album of the music of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir featuring her orchestral works ARCHORA from 2022 and AIŌN from 2018, by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra led by Chief Conductor Eva Ollikainen. The album is offered in standard CD and Pure Audio Blu-ray™ formats (5.1 DTS HD MA 192kHz, 7.1.4 Auro-3D 96kHz, 2.0 LPCM 192kHz, 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos 48kHz), as well as digitally.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “riveting” (The Times) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow.

ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms with co-commissioners the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Klangspuren Schwaz, and was premiered in August 2022 at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen in a concert selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and Ollikainen gave the U.S. premiere performances of ARCHORA at Walt Disney Concert Hall in May.

Of the premiere, Andrew Clements wrote in The Guardian, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today."

AIŌN was written for the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and co-commissioned by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ollikainen, will give the UK premiere performance of AIŌN on June 16, 2023 as part of the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival, where Anna will be featured composer. AIŌN is a symphony-scale orchestral work in three parts – “Morphosis,” “Transcension,” and “Entropia” – and has been described as, “intense, surprising, and beautiful. AIŌN takes you to another place,” by Nordlys, and as, “an extraordinary three-movement work ... a soundworld that could be massively placid, deafeningly chaotic, weirdly unearthly, or awesome with oceanic majesty,” by Classical Voice North America.

Anna writes of these two pieces, and her sources of inspiration, in this excerpt from the liner notes for the new album:

The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centers around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time . . . AIŌN is inspired by the abstract metaphor of being able to move freely in time, of being able to explore time as a space that you inhabit rather than experiencing it as a one-directional journey through a single dimension. . .

As with my music generally, the inspiration behind ARCHORA and AIŌN is not something I am trying to describe through the music or what the music is “about”, as such. Inspiration is a way to intuitively tap into parts of the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the music I am writing each time. It is a fuel for the musical ideas to come into existence, a tool to approach and work with the fundamental materials, the ideas and sensations, that provide and generate the initial spark to the music.

This new album follows the April 28, 2023 release on Sono Luminus of Anna’s major orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS (commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra) as part of the album Atmospheriques, recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra led by Daníel Bjarnason.

With the addition of these two albums in 2023, Sono Luminus will have released all six of Anna’s orchestral works to date – including METACOSMOS (commissioned by the New York Philharmonic), released in 2019; AERIALITY, originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2014 and re-released in a remastered version on Sono Luminus in 2022; and Dreaming, originally released on a portrait album by Innova Recordings in 2011 and re-released on Sono Luminus in 2020.

Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Her “confident and distinctive handling of the orchestra” (Gramophone) has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the Ivors Academy. Currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, she will also be in residence at the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival. She lives in the London area.

RECENT AND UPCOMING PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

Danish String Quartet International Tour - March 19-August 2, 2023
Featuring the premiere performance of Rituals
Including April 13 at UC Santa Barbara, CA; April 14 in Berkeley, CA; April 16 in Vancouver, BC; April 20 at Carnegie Hall in New York, NY; April 21 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; and more.
Information

Seven-City Iceland Symphony Orchestra UK Tour - April 20-28, 2023
Featuring METACOSMOS
Information

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles, CA - May 11-14, 2023
US premiere of ARCHORA
Information

Carnegie Hall, New York, NY - May 25, 2023
World premiere of Ubique, a concert-length work for solo flutes, two cellos, and piano; part of Claire Chase’s Density series
Information 

National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa, Ontario - May 18-19, 2023
Canadian premiere of CATAMORPHOSIS
Information 

Royal Opera House, London, England - June 9-17, 2023
Featuring CATAMORPHOSIS and METACOSMOS w/ choreography by Wayne McGregor
Information 

Aldeburgh Festival, Suffolk, England - June 12-24, 2023
Featured festival composer; UK Premiere of AIŌN, performance of METACOSMOS, and more
Information 

Tanglewood Festival & Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Lenox, MA - July 28-August 2, 2023
Composer in residence, including a portrait concert, performance of METACOSMOS, and the Danish String Quartet performing Rituals
Information

For Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s complete performance calendar, visit www.annathorvalds.com/performances.

ALBUM TRACK LISTING

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: ARCHORA / AIŌN
Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Eva Ollikainen
Sono Luminus
Release date: May 26, 2023

[1] ARCHORA by Anna Thorvaldsdottir [20:52]
[2-4] AIŌN by Anna Thorvaldsdottir
2. I. Morphosis [13:16]
3. II. Transcension [16:47]
4. III. Entropia [10:50]

Total Time: 61:48

Recorded at Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavík, Iceland
Norðurljós Recital Hall, October 17-20, 2022
Producer: Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Recording, Mixing Engineer: Daniel Shores
Editing Engineer: Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir
Assistant Engineer: Joshua Frey
Mastering Engineers: Daniel Shores; Morten Lindberg

Pure Audio Blu-ray™ Audio specifications:
5.1 DTS HD MA 192kHz
7.1.4 Auro-3D 96kHz
2.0 LPCM 192kHz
7.1.4 Dolby Atmos 48kHz