Miller Theatre to Present Composer Portrait of Iceland's Anna Thorvaldsdottir, 12/5

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues the 2013-14 Composer Portraits series with ANNA THORVALDSDOTTIR, a rare hearing of the Icelandic artist's soundscapes, featuring:

EITHER/OR
ZEENA PARKINS, harp
DAVID SHIVELY, percussion
RICHARD CARRICK, conductor

The concert is set for Thursday, December 5, 2013, 8:00 p.m. at Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets: $20-$30 • Students with valid ID: $12-$18.

From Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey: "In just the past year or so, I've had numerous people recommend Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music to me, and now, in the wake of the extraordinary success of her album Rhíz?ma, I am absolutely thrilled to present a Portrait of her work. This will be one of the first concerts in the U.S. dedicated solely to Thorvaldsdottir, and it is comprised almost entirely of pieces never before performed in New York. With the inimitable ensemble Either/Or on stage and long-time Miller collaborator Richard Carrick at the helm, this concert is sure to be a remarkable evening."

Miller Theatre's "ever-intriguing" (The New Yorker) signature series continues to celebrate the best contemporary composers from around the globe-emerging and established-with evening-length musical profiles. This season, all seven composers will participate in onstage discussions during their Portraits.

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has burst onto the scene in recent years. Her "shimmering, harmonically ambiguous" music is oft described in cinematic terms, evoking an expansive, wintry landscape with "the impression of a distant, howling wind" (The New York Times). Her 2011 album Rhíz?ma won international accolades, earning places on best-of lists from New York and Chicago to the Nordic countries. Either/Or plays a favorite from that record, Hrím, alongside several pieces never before heard in the U.S.

PROGRAM:
into - second self (2013) - U.S. premiere
Ró/Serenity (2013) - U.S. premiere
[one] (2008) - U.S. premiere
Tactility (2012) - New York premiere
Hrím (2009/2010)

ARTISTS:
Either/Or
Zeena Parkins, harp
David Shively, percussion
Richard Carrick, conductor

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977): Anna Thorvaldsdottir is an Icelandic composer who frequently works with large sonic structures that tend to reveal the presence of a vast variety of sustained sound materials, reflecting her sense of imaginative listening to landscapes and nature. Her music tends to portray a flowing world of sounds with an enigmatic lyrical atmosphere.

Anna's music is frequently performed in Europe and in the U.S., and has been featured at several major music festivals such as ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, and Ultima Festival. Her works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions. Her chamber orchestra piece Hrím was awarded Composition of the Year at the Icelandic Music Awards 2011, as well as the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2011. At the Icelandic Music Awards 2012, Anna was awarded Composer of the Year and her debut album Rhíz?ma was awarded Classical/Contemporary Album of the Year. Anna is the recipient of the Nordic Council Music Prize 2012 for her work Dreaming.

The Iceland Symphony Orchestra has premiered and recorded four of Anna's orchestra pieces, conducted by Ilan Volkov, Christian Lindberg, Rumon Gamba, Daniel Bjarnason, and Bernhardur Wilkinson. The noted Icelandic CAPUT Ensemble has also premiered and recorded major works by Anna, conducted by Snorri Sigfus Birgisson. Other ensembles that Anna has worked with include BIT20, Musiques Nouvelles, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Her most recent piece for orchestra, AERIALITY, was commissioned by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and premiered in November 2011, conducted by Ilan Volkov.

Anna holds a Ph.D. from the University of California in San Diego. At UCSD she primarily worked with Rand Steiger and Lei Liang, as well as with Chinary Ung, Philippe Manoury, Roger Reynolds, and percussionist Steven Schick.

Anna's debut portrait album - Rhíz?ma - was released in October 2011 through Innova Recordings. The album features three larger pieces for orchestra and chamber orchestra, including Dreaming, and five shorter movements from a solo percussed piano work. The pieces are performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Bjarnason, the CAPUT Ensemble, conducted by Snorri Sigfus Birgisson, and percussionist Justin DeHart. Rhíz?ma was very well received and in addition to being selected as Classical/Contemporary Album of the Year at the Icelandic Music Awards 2012, the album also appeared on a number of "Best of 2011" lists, including those by Time Out New Yorkand Time Out Chicago.

Either/Or: Either/Or is a cutting-edge contemporary music ensemble based in New York City. Founded in 2004 by pianist/composer Richard Carrick and percussionist David Shively, Either/Or focuses on compelling new and recent works for unconventional ensemble formations rarely heard elsewhere. The group draws upon its roster, featuring some of New York's leading interpreters, to present intense chamber music alongside larger ensemble works. E/O has performed to critical acclaim at Miller Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, The Kitchen, MATA Festival, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and ICA:Boston, in addition to frequent appearances at experimental music venues such as The Stone, Roulette, and Issue Project Room.

Programs have included numerous world, U.S., and New York premieres; these range from major works of American experimental music to rarely heard classics from the dynamic margins of the European avant-garde. In addition to its ongoing collaborations with emerging artists, Either/Or has brought distinguished composers such as Helmut Lachenmann (2008), Paolo Aralla (2009), and Chaya Czernowin (2010, 2011) to New York for concerts and lectures.

Zeena Parkins: Zeena Parkins, pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance, reimagines the instrument as a "sound machine of limitless capacity." Parkins has built three versions of her one-of-a-kind electric harp and has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of electronic processing.

Inspired by and connected to visual arts, dance, film, and history, Parkins follows a unique path in creating her compositional works. Through blending and morphing of both real and imagined instruments; crafting, recombining, and layering mangled, sliced, massaged or possibly disengaged sounds; drawing from extra-musical sources for unusual scoring and formal constructions as well as utilizing multi-speaker environments, Parkins remains in process with sound as material and music, engaged in translations of sonic states in the concert hall, the black box theater, the dance studio, the recording studio, the classroom, the cinema, the skyscraper, the ocean and the gallery. Parkins has a particularly strong commitment to making scores for dance, and continues to re-evaluate the nature and issues of the body's imprint on sound and sound/music's imprint on movement.

Parkins's compositions have been commissioned by Ne(x)tworks ensemble, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Roulette Intermedium, the Eclipse Quartet, William Winant, Bang on a Can, the Whitney Museum, the Tate Modern, Montalvo Arts Center, the Donaueschinger Musiktage and Sudwestrundfunk/SWR.

Parkins has released four solo records featuring her electric and acoustic harp playing and has released her compositions and band projects on six Tzadik recordings, most recently a CD with Ikue Mori and Phantom Orchard Orchestrato entitled Trouble in Paradise. As a sought-after collaborator Parkins has worked with Fred Frith, Björk, Ikue Mori, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Maja Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Chris Cutler, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, William Winant, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Matmos, Yasunao Tone, So Percussion, Bobby Previte, Carla Kilhstedt, Tin Hat, James Fei, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo, and Thurston Moore.

David Shively: David Shively performs as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America and Europe, working in media ranging from traditional percussion to Hungarian cimbalom to musical saw to analog electronic systems and feedback. Currently based in Brooklyn, NY, he has been co-artistic director of the ensemble Either/Or since 2004, curating its programs and festivals in New York City and elsewhere. He also guests regularly with groups such as Collegium Novum Zürich, NYNME, GNOM-Baden, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Recent solo engagements include Dia:Beacon, Performa 09 (New York), the American Academy in Rome, Other Minds (San Francisco), and Wittner Tage für neue Kammermusik (Witten). Stage soloist credits include Pnima... ins innere (München, 2000; Stuttgart, 2010) and The Persians (National Actors' Theatre). He has recorded for CRI, Mode, New World, Starkland, Tzadik, and many other labels in addition to numerous works for film, sound installation, and radio broadcast.