Nú in collaboration with Halldór Smárason

Nú is a reintegration of the art of improvisation with the concerto genre and an exploration of how music might more directly respond to the present moment. Previous collaborations between Halldór Smárason and Sæunn Þorsteinsdóttir led them to imagine a concert experience where the combination of soloist, orchestra, and audience could be more meaningful and interactive than a typical performance, in which a true musical dialogue between soloist, orchestra, and audience can take place in real time in a concert setting.

Specifically, the piece is approximately 15 to 20 minutes in length, with the solo part almost completely improvised, as well as the written out parts in the orchestra including opportunities for improvisation. The audience plays a crucial role, as the solo part will be inspired by them and moments of interaction, and while the form of the piece remains the same, the length of each part is flexible, and therefore the length of the piece will vary with each performance.

As part of the rehearsal process, orchestral players will be invited to choose their level of engagement with improvisation in their parts, and those that have particular interest could be invited to a few sessions in the months leading up to the week of rehearsals to deepen their own improvisation practices as a professional development offering. This could be a good opportunity for a Friday morning concert for a younger audience, as the audience participation could be exciting for those who may not be familiar with this kind of concert experience.

Halldór and Sæunn have already produced a prototype which was performed with Christopher Rountree and the chamber orchestra Wild Up in Los Angeles in November 2022, and a recording of the performance has been made available to the committee. There is already interest from US orchestras in commissioning the expansion of the score to a full orchestra while continuing to explore greater audience participation.

Gemæltan by Veronique Vaka

Gemæltan (2020)

Written for Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir

We are living the most rapid change of Earth’s forces that a single generation has experienced. Glaciers, that before moved at geological speed of

centuries and millennia, are now vanishing in a lifetime of a single human being. Nature has left geological speed and moves at human speed.

Now we are living in times where leaders of the world meet and discuss how they will observe rising sea level in the next 100 years with melting

and vanishing of glaciers. As if that was a normal natural process. Cesar, Ramses II, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, none of them thought

they could lift the oceans of the world. Moses split the Red Sea and that was an accomplishment, but that was nothing compared with lifting entire

oceans of the world by melting most of the glaciers.

We are living in a new era, a new paradigm of understanding, a new geological era, the Anthropocene, but it feels like we don't comprehend it.

We see the facts, the brain takes in the data, but still, it is as if what is happening is not really understood. A scientist told me that he could gather

data and measurements, but he would not really understand his findings until others understood them. Understanding is not an individual act; it is

a collective culture. If we look at the history of paradigm shifts, we can see that the real shift does not happen until the new ideas are embedded in

culture. In stories, in poetry, music, film or visual art.

I thought at first it was odd to make music about a melting glacier. How do you do that? It might be obvious how to capture a melting glacier in

words and pictures, but how do you capture a melting glacier with classical instruments?

The work Gemæltan began when Veronique found an old map of the area of Siðujökull and compared it with a modern one. The change was

alarming. The intention behind Gemæltan is to create awareness of climate change by an abstract representation of the vanishing landscape and

the glacial afterglow, with a title and a programme note leading the audience to active listening.

The approach is almost scientific; the piece is shaped by climate change. By going through texts and gathering data and information on the location,

the behaviour of glaciers and their impact on landscape and ecology. By examining graphs and maps and extracting information to create the time

progression of the piece. It then evolved to the idea of writing a cello concerto — with all the possibilities of creating a dialogue between a soloist

and an orchestra.The structure of the work consists of two surges and two quiescent phases - the last being the rapid retreat which leads to the disappearance of the

glacier. The composer translates the gathered information by associating them to music parameters, and by defining the role of the soloist and the

orchestra. She imagines details of the glaciers as motifs, colours, living materials, textures, and it affects the way she perceives the orchestration.

As an example, the water accumulating under the glacier, moving rocks and matter, influenced how the piece shifts from one instrument to the

other - intending to create a natural flow and a sense of wholeness.

Surge #1: The cellist is representing the behaviour of the glacier. She creates events which make the orchestra react. This moment is to

describe the enormous mass and volume of the glacier moving forward as a unity.

Quiescent phase #1: Retreat: Since the movement forward has stopped, this new phase is represented by a sensation of stillness and a

decrease in energy. Even though the glacier is retreating, its inner power is growing for the next surge.

Surge #2: The cellist is gradually passing from the quiescent phase motif (harmonics) to the surge motif (double-stops), leading to the

cadenza. Which will, gradually "wake-up" the orchestra and lead to a movement of unity (climax).

Quiescent phase #2: Retreat: The landscape is being transformed by the incredibly fast retreat of the glacier. It will lead to its complete

disappearance. It is pictured with the drastic changes of colours by the cellist and the orchestra. The contours of the land are lost, and a

different landscape emerges. The mood is shifting; the energy is fading, and the volume of the glacier is changing.

The end: The orchestra which represented the glacier has gone - its mass has dissolved. The soloist is now alone, and she expresses the

glacier’s reminiscence by using fragments, colours and textures of the previous motifs. There is less and less material left, and the sound

is gradually losing its quality and fading into nothingness.

Earth has left geological speed and is changing to human speed. We seem to react at geological speed. Cellist Gunnar Kvaran told me that the

violin speaks to the head, it is clever and fast, while the cello speaks to the heart. We are living times of urgency, where we have new data that

needs to speak to the heart. The cello might be the perfect medium to speed up the paradigm shift and the call to action.

Andri Snær Magnason, author

Reykjavík, December 2020

Quake by Páll Ragnar Pálsson

"Quake" by Icelandic composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson is a 15-minute cello concerto written for me in 2016 that has been gaining attention since its debut at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and in 2018, was selected as the most outstanding work at the International Rostrum of Composers.  A true feast for the ears and wonderfully moving, it is inspired by the following excerpt:

“For a thousand years, tension amassed in the lava, only to break apart in the blink of an eye during a great quake when the rock under my feet ruptured and fossils and silvery crystals broke through the surface, events long past entombed in age-old laws of minerals before unknown geysers erupted and everything that had been became something new—the landscape would never be the same. I stare into the abyss, into the chasm in my own life, and hear it shattering all around me.”    Auður Jónsdóttir “The Big Quake” 2015.

A co-commission with the NDR Symphony and the LA Phil, I have also performed it in Harpa, the gorgeous concert hall in Reykjavík with the Iceland Symphony and it was incredibly well received at each performance. Mark Swed from the LA Times wrote in his review:

“Quake,” is pretty much what its title suggests, the music of the ground not being steady under your feet. Nothing is settled, everything is in trills and tremolos and glissandi. The solo cello, excellently played by Saeunn Thorsteinsdóttir, creaks and moans. But the most effective musical quaking feels interior, evoking the quaking you feel in those first seconds when an earthquake begins, when you first sense the Earth may be moving but have no idea yet how much.

Bow to String by Daníel Bjarnason

What started off as a piece for 40 cellos on the composer’s debut album has now been beautifully re-orchestrated for cello solo and full orchestra. The piece starts with a driving first movement, Sorrow Conquers Happiness, sensual second movement, Blood to Bones, that John Adams described as an Icelandic tango, and finishes with a transcendant third movement, Air to Breath.