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Nikki Martins 'Bittersweet' is trembling with yearning and sensual desire

Nikki Martin © Freja M. Kreutzfeldt

Nikki Martins 'Bittersweet' is trembling with yearning and sensual desire

On 3 June a new digital album will be released, presenting Nikki Martin's Bittersweet for soprano, marimba and accordion with heart-aching lyrics by Sappho and Juan Ramón Jiménez.

New release
19 May 2022

There is a place where the sacred shades into the sensual. The point where chant clings to the silence of the nave, and the stone glows back in return. This is the tender line on which Nikki Martin sets Bittersweet for soprano, accordion, and marimba.

The Icelandic/Greek trio KIMI has recorded Bittersweet on a digital album which will be released on Dacapo Records on 3 June. You can already now pre-save the album to your preferred streaming service here.

Trembling desire and painful yearning

The British-born composer Nikki Martin [they/them] is hovering between musical traditions and striving for naked emotional honesty. Their work Bittersweet from 2019 is sensitive music, filled with sensuality and a melancholic longing. The Nordic sound is mixed with associations to the music of the English composer John Dowland in the dramatic opening notes of the first movement, Love shook my heart

The words of the chant originate from two heart-aching and intensely sensuos fragments by Sappho, one of the few female poets from the Antiquity: ‘Love shook my heart like the wind that falls on oaks in the mountains; I miss and yearn after …’. The second movement Yo no soy yo (I am not I) is based on words by the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez.

A space for reflection

The insistent repetitions of text fragments in Bittersweet allow potential meanings to be folded in and out of the music: – I haven't sought after a particular meaning, but rather hoped that through allowing the words and music to be together in a space for some time, that the listener can feel their way into their own meanings, says Nikki Martin.

– For me, I have resonated differently with both Sappho's poetry, and the gorgeous poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez in the intervening years since I composed the piece; it is not the texts that have changed over time, but rather myself that changes in relation to them; how a word or line can hit a nerve at a particular time, and leave you cold another. My hope is that Bittersweet is a space a listener can be in, return to, and can allow for reflection and feeling, Martin elaborates.

KIMI and Nick Martin

Bittersweet is written for and recorded by the Copenhagen based KIMI ensemble, consisting of Katerina Anagnostidou (percussion), Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson (accordion) and Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir (mezzo soprano). KIMI was nominated for an Iceland Music Awards 2021 for ‘Concert of the Year’ and the ensemble with the unique instrumentation is looking forward to a USA tour with new works by Hugi Guðmundsson and Marianna Filippi, as one of their coming projects.

Nikki Martin (b. 1989) has written music for orchestras, ensembles and soloists, including Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen Phil, Esprit Orchestra, Bjarke Mogensen, and Esbjerg Ensemble. Martin holds a bachelor’s in composition from the Royal Academy of Music in London with Simon Bainbridge, and a master’s degree in composition from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where their
teachers were Bent Sørensen and Hans Abrahamsen. Martin also completed an advanced postgraduate degree at the Danish Rhythmical Music Conservatory in 2021.

Release concert in Musikhuset København

The release of Bittersweet is celebrated with a free release concert in Musikhuset København on Tuesday 7 June at 17:30.

  • Nikki Martin

    Bittersweet

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