Feb 28: Sono Luminus Releases UBIQUE by Anna Thorvaldsdottir Featuring Flutist Claire Chase - Part of Chase’s Density 2036 Project
Sono Luminus Releases
World Premiere Recording of UBIQUE by Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Featuring Flutist Claire Chase
with Pianist Cory Smythe and Cellists Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods
Commissioned as Part of Claire Chase’s Density 2036 Project
Worldwide Release Date: February 28, 2025
“[Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music] feels both otherworldly and elemental, as if forces of nature, from massive galaxies to tiny granules, are regenerating themselves to create new, unknown structures, essential for life.” – NPR Music
"The North star of her instrument's ever- expanding universe.” – The New York Times on Claire Chase
Review CDs and downloads available upon request.
www.annathorvalds.com | www.clairechase.net | www.sonoluminus.com
On Friday, February 28, 2025, Sono Luminus releases the world premiere recording of UBIQUE, a new evening-length chamber work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. The 50-minute piece was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Cheswatyr Foundation, Kurt Chauviere, and Density Arts for Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project. The world premiere was given in May 2023 at Carnegie Hall, performed by Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; and Cory Smythe, piano; with 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. The work is inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance – throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the Infinite. 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.”
UBIQUE continues Sono Luminus’ commitment to releasing Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music. All of her orchestral music and many of her other works are available on Sono Luminus, and featured on Apple Music’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir Essentials Playlist.
UBIQUE was commissioned for the tenth cycle of Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project, a 24-year initiative to create a new repertory for the flute leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Each year until 2036, Chase will commission, premiere, and record an adventurous new program of flute music. Chase, who the New York Times describes as having “dizzying technical facility across the flute family,” and who The Wall Street Journal writes as having “a rare combination of grace and guts,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase was the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season, only the second time in that organization’s history that the position has been given to a performing artist. Chase’s discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres.
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’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. She is currently the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair. 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. 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. Another major highlight of this 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, Odense Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Proms. Additional country premieres will be announced.
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.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com
Claire Chase: www.clairechase.net/about
Cory Smythe: www.corysmythe.com/bio
Katinka Kleijn: www.katinkakleijn.com
Seth Parker Woods: www.sethparkerwoods.com/About
ALBUM TRACK LISTING:
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: UBIQUE
Claire Chase, flute; Cory Smythe, piano; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cello
Sono Luminus | Release date: February 28, 2025
[1] part I [5:34]
[2] part II [10:33]
[3] part III [1:48]
[4] part IV [1:28]
[5] part V [3:58]
[6] part VI [6:19]
[7] part VII [0:39]
[8] part VIII [2:05]
[9] part IX [5:35]
[10] part X [1:24]
[11] part XI [6:45]
Total Time: 45:00
Claire Chase, flute / bass flute / contrabass flute
Cory Smythe, piano
Katinka Kleijn, cello
Seth Parker Woods, cello
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, composer
A MEYER SOUND PRODUCTION
Recorded at Studio 9, The Porches, North Adams, MA, October 19, 2023
Producer and Session Engineer: Rick Jacobsohn
Executive Producers: Helen Meyer and John Meyer
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Mixing and Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Cover Photography: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Performance Photography: Jennifer Taylor
Design & Layout: Joshua Frey