New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Today Sono Luminus Records releases AEQUA, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)'s highly anticipated second portrait album of the music of composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. AEQUA features a varied constellation of recent chamber pieces including large ensemble works Aequilibria (2014) and Illumine (2016) led by conductor and longtime ICE collaborator Steven Schick; small chamber works Spectra (2017), Sequences (2016), Reflections (2016), and Fields (2016); and Scape (2011) for solo piano performed by champion of Anna's music, Cory Smythe. Physical package includes both CD and Pure Audio Blu- ray with 9.1 Auro-3D, Dolby Atmos 5.1.4, and 5.1 Surround Sound versions, as well as the mShuttle application containing FLAC, WAV, and MP3 audio files.
AEQUA takes the listener on a journey through Anna Thorvaldsdottir's distinctive sound world, where coloristic nuance becomes the music's lyricism, harmony, and structure. Anna says, "My music is often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, but I do not strive to describe or literally incorporate elements from nature in my music. To me, the qualities of the music are first and foremost musical - so when I am inspired by a particular element that I perceive in nature, it is because I perceive it as musically interesting. The qualities I tend to be inspired by are often structural, like proportion and flow, as well as relationships of balance between details within a larger structure, and how to move in perspective between the two - the details and the unity of the whole."
The International Contemporary Ensemble has performed Anna's music at Lincoln Center and at venues and festivals around the world. Sono Luminus released Anna Thorvaldsdottir's portrait album In the Light of Air in August 2015, performed by ICE, to great acclaim. In the Light of Air appeared on a number of year-end lists including those of The New York Times, The New Yorker, The
Boston Globe, NPR Classical, and The
Chicago Reader. The
Chicago Tribune wrote, "Not everyday does an extended introduction to a composer prove as unusual and immediately gratifying."
