ICE presents:
The Music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir
with pianist Cory Smythe and the International Contemporary Ensemble
About the Show
This performance is hosted by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), one of National Sawdust’s 2017-2018 Artists-in-Residence. The residency program at National Sawdust is dedicated to incubating bold work and bold artists, devoting a pool of $450,000 of both in-kind and financial contributions among selected artists every year.
Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s music is immersive. Inspired by landscapes, nature, and flowing, sustained sounds, it transports a listener to the vast expanse of an unfamiliar, seductive place. The International Contemporary Ensemble’s collaboration with Anna has spanned many years, including an appearance at the Ojai Music Festival. Of that performance, Alex Ross of The New Yorker wrote, “Nothing I witnessed at opera houses this past season was as dramatic.” As the Kravis Emerging Composer at the New York Philharmonic, Anna’s orchestral piece Metacosmos was premiered in April 2018, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Philharmonic has presented chamber works by Anna at National Sawdust on their CONTACT! new-music series.
On Sunday, May 27 at 4 PM, National Sawdust features a selection of works played by ICE which center on her unorthodox use of the piano. ICE pianist Cory Smythe, a champion and commissioner of Anna’s solo music, is in the center of National Sawdust’s stage, circled by the audience, with the audience encircled by ICE musicians, immersed in Anna’s sounds. The conductor Steven Schick, a longtime ICE collaborator, leads the ensemble. This performance forms part of ICE’s presence at National Sawdust in the 2017-18 season as Artists-in-Residence.
The program features three solo works and one ensemble piece, all of which will be recorded for ICE’s second disc of Anna’s music on the award-winning Sono Luminus label. Trajectories (2014), for piano and video, opens the program, followed by [one] and Scape. Trajectories is a collaborative work between Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Sigurdur Gudjonsson, consisting of three-channel HD video and stereo sound. The piece was commissioned by The Reykjavik Center for Visual Music and premiered at the festival of RCVM in January 2014. The three piano works involve strums and resonant scraping inside the instrument which embellish Anna’s potent harmonies. Aequilibria is an ICE specialty last heard in New York at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. The piece highlights all eleven instruments as they emerge to shine from the work’s watery depths. Its glacial yet sure sense of growth is a hallmark of every piece on this varied program.
OpenICE is made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Portions of this project are supported by Nokia Bell Labs. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.
About the Artists
Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Anna Thorvaldsdottir 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 internationally, and has been featured at several major venues and music festivals such as Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Big Ears Festival, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Klangspuren Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Her works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions – most notably, Anna is the recipient of the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize 2012 for her work Dreaming, the New York Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer Award in 2015, and Lincoln Center’s 2018 Emerging Artist Award and 2018 Martin E. Segal Award.
Some of the orchestras and ensembles that have performed Anna’s work include International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Yarn/Wire, The Crossing, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, CAPUT Ensemble, Oslo Philharmonic, and Either/Or Ensemble. In April 2018, Esa-Pekka Salonen will lead the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of Anna’s work Metacosmos, which was commissioned by the orchestra.
Anna holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego.
Cory Smythe
Pianist Cory Smythe works actively in new, classical, and improvised music. He has performed widely, making appearances as soloist and chamber musician at the Darmstadt International Festival for New Music, the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City, the Green Mill jazz club in Chicago, and the Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center. In recent seasons, Smythe has played alongside violinist Hilary Hahn in concerts throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A Washington Post review of the duo’s performance at the Kennedy Center praised Smythe for “…the ferocity and finesse of his technique.” Their Grammy-winning album, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, documents Hahn’s diverse collection of newly commissioned encores for violin and piano.
As a core member of the new music group the International Contemporary Ensemble, Smythe has given numerous premieres, collaborated in the development of new pieces, and worked closely with composers John Zorn, Philippe Hurel, Dai Fujikura, George Lewis, and Alvin Lucier among many others. ICE’s 2013 release on Mode Records features Smythe as the piano soloist in Iannis Xenakis’s ‘Palimpsest’. Smythe has also been a featured guest and soloist with many new music ensembles throughout the United States, including Milwaukee’s Present Music, the Boston-based Firebird Ensemble, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. He performs regularly in collaboration with many of the leading concert artists of his generation, appearing this last season with the cellist Joshua Roman, violinist Karen Gomyo, the Imani Winds, and members of the Providence and Rubens string quartets.
An innovative improviser, Smythe performs as a soloist and in collaboration with a wide array of jazz and creative artists, among them, most recently, Peter Evans, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, and Anthony Braxton. This season will see the release of recordings featuring Smythe in projects led by Tyshawn Sorey and Nate Wooley. Smythe’s own album, Pluripotent — described by celebrated jazz pianist Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard” — is available for free download at corysmythe.bandcamp.com
