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Bára Gísladóttir is releasing the award nominated work VÍDDIR

Bára Gísladóttir and Skúli Sverrisson in Hallgrímskirkja, Dark Musik Days (photo: Juliette Rowland)

Bára Gísladóttir is releasing the award nominated work VÍDDIR

On 28 October, a digital album is released with Bára Gísladóttir's work VÍDDIR in a live recording from Dark Musik Days in Reykjavik. VÍDDIR is nomintaed for the Nordic Council Music Prize. 

New release
06 October 2022

When the Icelandic composer and double bassist Bára Gísladóttir had her graduation concert from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2020, she marked the completion of her studies with the first performance of a monumental piece written for the vast acoustic of Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen. The work VÍDDIR is written for nine flutes, three percussion and acoustic and electric bass soloists with the acoustics of the building as an unnamed fifteenth performer.

Two and a half years later the debut concert, VÍDDIR has ben performed several other places around the world and Bára Gísladóttir has been nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for the work. Now VÍDDIR is to be released as a digital album in a live recording from the festival Dark Music Days in Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik.

A black night of a piece

VÍDDIR is an unbroken hour in length, again and again returning to its own dark light. The work opens with the five bass flautists screaming, ‘as strong as possible’, into their instruments. From the first sounds it is clear that VÍDDIR "dimensions" in Icelandic is a black night of a piece, in which Gísladóttir drags us into the deep abyss.

In the concert room the nine flutes are arranged in a halo around the audience, and in the centre, the two bassists form a dense, nucleus alongside the three percussionists. Gísladóttir herself is performing on the recording next to her long-term musical partner, renowned Icelandic bassist Skúli Sverrisson.

As sounds are made, they fade and bloom into the enormous resonance, making VÍDDIR a work that does not take place so much in the moment as in its aftermath, int its reverberations. While the music breathes in the room, Gísladóttir and Sverrisson fill the spaces with improvisation on a black background of sound.

Three giant tam-tams – ‘the biggest we can find’, asks the score – provide the shattering climax to an already shattering piece. Towards the end, a single bass flute surveys the wreckage, humming, howling and eventually sinking into the void.

Kreativ og kompromisløs

Bára Gísladóttir (f. 1989) is an Icelandic composer and double bassist based in Copenhagen. In 2020 Gísladóttir released her debut for Dacapo Records, the solo album HĪBER for double bass and electronic, recorded by Gísladóttir herself. HĪBER was nominated for the Icelandic Kraumur Award 2020 and named Classical Album of the Year by Morgunblaðið.

The Icelandic adjudication committee nominated Bára Gísladóttir for the Nordic Council Music Prize 2022 and motivates the nomination: “Her highly creative and uncompromising works project personal and distinctive textural narratives which, as she notes, are based on thoughts regarding the approach and concepts of sound as a living being. In her enthralling large-scale chamber piece VÍDDIR, Bára shapes the sounds and structure of the music in an organic way with focus on textural and timbral progressions through various portals of possibilities of the instruments.”

Pre-save VÍDDIR to your streaming service here.

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