Caput Ensemble performs Stífluhringurinn
by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson
Releases on June 21st on Carrier Records
In his search for a pathway for musical expression that knows neither grids nor straight lines, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson has incorporated screen based scores and animated notation (or related digital methods) to express his inability to adapt to the convenient society. As a result, he frequently works with the same set of musicians, e.g. Fengjastrútur it’s splinter quartet Fersteinn.
Stífluhringurinn is a work by Guðmundur Steinn, inspired by a suburban path and landmark in Reykjavík that connects the two neighborhoods where he grew up. The piece is dedicated to two priests who serve in each of these neighborhoods. One is a Lutheran minister of Japanese descent who has worked extensively with refugees and regular immigrants for decades, regardless of their background or religion. The other is a Zen priest of Icelandic descent who has spent a lot of time in training monasteries in Japan and America.
In the words of the composer:
“Stífluhringurinn means the dam circle and is a place where an old electrical dam used to operate. Unlike many other dams in Iceland environmentalists have asked for it to be taken back into use to help birdlife in the area. The beautiful outdoors area around, full of trees, is almost entirely manmade. It is a suburban outdoor utopia that is full of birdsong and wonder and makes people forget where they are for a moment.
At the time of writing the piece I was getting very much into the idea of 4 general sound categories (short pitchless, short pitched, long pitched and glissando) and the form of these pieces reflect that. Each of the two movements has a 4 part structure where each element has its most dominant moment before falling into the background. This order in the first piece is reversed in the second. The idea is that the first movement is like climbing upward in the Stífluhringur and the second movement is like going back but on the other side so that by the end you’ve come full circle.”
The piece was written for the Caput Ensemble who premiered it in 2019. Covid derailed all plans for a group recording. Due to social distancing rules, the decision was made to record the piece in smaller groups. This resulted in a more granular recording, allowing the composer the freedom to rework the piece in the studio afterwards. The goal of the recording was not to produce an exact representation but to allow for a kind of free play that could bring certain subtleties to the front that would easily be lost in the concert hall. After the composer’s initial editing and effecting, the Norman Conquest mixed and mastered the album with added artistic touches.
Will release on CD/LP/Download
Stífluhringurinn I – Arabakki (dedicated to Sr. Toshiki Toma)
Stífluhringurinn II – Klettabær (dedicated to Ástvaldi Zenki Traustason)
Caput Ensemble:
Tenor and bass recorder + found objects: Þórunn Björnsdóttir
Flute and alto flute recorder + found objects: Steinunn Vala Pálsdóttir
Clarinet in Bb recorder + found objects: Guðni Franzson
French horn: Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir
Trumpet: Eiríkur Orri Ólafsson
Trombone: Ingi Garðar Erlendsson
Harpsichord and re-tuned harmonica: Guðrún Óskarsdóttir
Steel string guitar, banjo and re-tuned harmonica: Óskar Magnússon
12-string guitar, mandolin and re-tuned harmonica: Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson
Percussion: Steef van Oosterhout
Violin: Hildigunnur Haraldsdóttir
Viola: Herdís Anna Jónsdóttir
Violoncello: Sigurður Halldórsson
Recorded by Albert Finnbogason at Víðistaðakirkja February 2022
Editing by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson
Mixing and Mastering by The Norman Conquest
Cover designed by Studio Caps Lock in A Black Hole
About the Caput Ensemble
“Through their earnest, skillful and passionate work – including dozens of CD-releases, touring and participation in many of our foremost festivals – Caput has gratified innumerable listeners with their artistically eminent performances of contemporary music by Nordic composers, ever since it was founded in 1987.”
Caput ensemble was founded in 1987 by young Icelandic musicians. It started as a small chamber group but grew rapidly to a sinfonietta with up to 20 players. The size of Caput has always been flexible. Each member can stand out as a soloist and the ensemble plays duos, trios, quartets, octets etc.
This is how our work was described by Nordic composers when Caput received the 2011 Council of Nordic Composers prize for the advancement of contemporary Nordic classical, electro acoustic and art music. The prize was awarded during the 2011 Nordic Music Days in Harpa Reykjavík. Is there more to say? Our emphasis has been first; new Icelandic music, second; new Nordic music; third; new music from the rest of the world; Japan, Italy, Romania, Northern Ireland, China …
Caput has premiered countless works by Icelandic and “overseas” composers – everything is overseas for Icelanders. Among composers that have written for or worked with Caput are:
- Bent Sörensen, Denmark
- Olaf Anton Thommesen, Norway
- Doina Rotaru, Romania
- Jukka Koskinen, Finaland
- Veli Matti Puumala, Finaland
- Aldo Clementi, Italia
- Fausto Romitelli, Italia
- Allesandro Solbiati Italia
- Toshio Hosokawa, Japan
- Misato Mochizuki, Japan
- Hiroyuki Itoh, Japan
Countless Icelandic composers have worked with CAPUT, some of them from the beginning like Atli Heimir Sveinsson, Haukur Tómasson, Snorri Sigfús Birgisson, Atli Ingólfsson, Hróðmar Ingi Sigurbjörnsson, Sveinn Lúðvík Björnsson and Áskell Másson. The reinforcement of the younger generation is of course important. For few years now we have made several projects with Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, both concerts and recordings.
CAPUT is an independent ensemble supported by the Icelandic Ministry of Culture and City of Reykjavík. Conductor and clarinetist, Guðni Franzson and flutist Kolbeinn Bjarnason have been the artistic directors and managers from the beginning.
Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson is among the early pioneers of animated notation. His approach is based on intuitive explorations of organic rhythms that cannot be confined to any metronome. This extends into his ideas on intonation, harmony, sonorities and musical structure.
Recently, the concept of the four elements has been a major influence, as have ancient tunings and traditional Icelandic poetic meters. He has been a part of the S.L.Á.T.U.R. experimental music association in Reykjavík, where he has found many like-minded individuals among whom he has been able to develop his ways, means and style.
Sam T. Rees is a Worcestershirean artist who works with interactive electronics, hacked robotics, found objects and strange printing methods. He is an enthusiast of print, ink and obscure old, rare DIY methods that never really caught on. He has an eclectic collection of obsolete printers, digital, analog, non-electrical, gelatinous or fully vegan.
Some date back more than a 100 years, others only 70 while the youngest are somewhere around 40. He and Guðmundur Steinn have worked together on 7 different record and CD covers + the most recent one that is on double LP (hand-made very very ultra limited edition) and CD (also hand-made and in very limited edition).
The Norman Conquest [TNC] is a producer and recording engineer specializing in esoteric music at the intersections of experimental, rock, modern classical, metal, avant-garde, & drone. Utilizing both standard and unconventional recording practices, TNC uses the recording studio as his instrument.
Some of the artists that TNC has recorded include Barn Owl, Grouper, Elliott Sharp, Mute Socialite, Gregg Kowalsky, Quentin Sirjacq, Zachary Watkins, Alee Karim, Agnes Szelag, Marielle Jakobsons, Ellen Fullman, Stuart Dempster, Phillip Greenlief, Molissa Fenley, and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten). TNC’s recordings can be found on record labels such as Tzadik, Thrill Jockey, Intakt, The Tapeworm, Root Strata, Important, Ambiances Magnetiques, Digitalis, and Tompkins Square Records.
In addition to recording, TNC performs as a sound manipulator and vocalist in Cosa Brava (with Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Matthias Bossi, Carla Kihlstedt, & Shahzad Ismaily), Art Bears Songbook, & Dokuro (with Agnes Szelag). TNC has performed all throughout Europe and at various international festivals including FIMAV (Victoriaville, Canada), Musique Action (Nancy, France), Music Unlimited (Wels, Austria), Music for People & Thingamajigs (San Francisco, CA), and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.
Further info:
carrierrecords@gmail.com
gudmundursteinn@gmail.com
Tel: +354 845 0065
From Reviews about previous music by Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson:
“It was like Macbeth’s brief candle, flickering tantalisingly before being extinguished when the fingers stopped moving.” -Christopher Woodley on ‘Sitt hvoru megin við þilið’ played by Apartment House in Wigmore Hall in Bachtrack, April 2024
“The effect is to feel like one is in the hands of the weather itself. […] Consider the seductive quarter tones of the closing three pieces as an example of the care and craft on offer here. There is not enough space in a review like this to really get deep into this music. Witty, inventive, unusual and captivating.” -Johny Lamb on ‘Landvættirnar fjórar’ in The Quietus, October 2022
On the first encounter, it feels primitive in its artlessness, but it quickly becomes clear that not only are these sounds—deftly performed by Steinalda, an ensemble Gunnarsson assembled for this project—meticulously plotted, but once the ears can adapt to this charmingly odd sound-world, the music is flush with folksy melodic fragments, crystalline counterpoint, and polyrhythm. It recalls some ancient Japanese folk traditions in terms of its lean austerity, but in the end, it occupies a space all of its own.” -Peter Margasak on ‘Landvættirnar fjórar’ for Bandcamp Daily – Best Contemporary Classical, October 2022
“Whatever the aura, Landvættirnar fjórar consistently entices due to Gunnarsson’s attention to compositional detail, with each moment in his musical timeline serving a purpose.” -Marc Masters on ‘Landvættirnar fjórar’ for Bandcamp Daily – Best Experimental, November 2022
“Landvættirnar fjórar is a complete outlier, an album made with curious instrumentation that sounds like an avant folk tale.” -Richard Allen on ‘Landvættirnar fjórar’ for A Closer Listen, October 2022
“Look into the natural setting placed before us. Understand or lives in brief moments, while the world around exists in epochs. An average size tree might equal the length of a single human existence, river contours or mountain ranges multiply this factor exponentially. […] The sounds of Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson help connect these vast blocks of time with present day. An orchestra of primordial essence, tones and rhythms reaching past future directions.” -Robert Rattle on ‘Landvættirnar fjórar’ for Lost in the Sea of Sound, October 2022
„ . . .Every piece on Skartamannafelagid is a triumph of this deeply integrated way of composing; layers pulling indifferent directions, astonishingly novel textures and sounds. We have something that appears to effortlessly bypass many conventions . . .” -Ed Pinsent on ‘Skartamannafélagið’ in the Sound Projector, January 2020
“This is music like no-other, anarchic and experimental, free yet controlled, humorous but entirely serious, it treats the rules of Western classical music with a freedom and a seriousness that arise out of oral and folk traditions filtered through an idiosyncratic modernism.” -Robert Hugill on ‘Sinfónía’ in Planet Hugill, June 2020.
“. . . feels like being welcomed into an eccentric, remote village where residents have freely mashed together ancient traditions and newly invented customs to devise their own rustic utopia.” –Nick Storring on ‘Sinfónía’ in MusicWorks Fall 2020
“The opening of the work was breathtaking, […] As Heiða softened into silence, Mengi was left filled with the sound of an electronic chorus of her siren-like familiars; emanating from unseen speakers, it was a beautiful and stunning resolution.” -Simon Cummings on ‘Laberico Narabida’ in 5against4 February 2019
“Here there was a performance of an opera of Wagnerian length, width and depth […] these were tidings and they rarely get any bigger in the world of opera in Iceland.” -Atli Ingólfsson on ‘Einvaldsóður’, Þræðir 2018.
“A fascinating piece with a strained, declamatory vibe”. -Gavin Gamboa on Caput Ensemble’s performance of ‘Erfiljóð handa Guðmundi’ in I care if you listen, February 2016
. . . Conductor Ilan Volkov got to know the Reykjavík composers’ collective Slátur during his recent stint as music director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Their playful, DIY, communicative ethos clearly struck a chord. In Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson’s Sporgyla, musicians gathered around large digitised graphic scores for a happy, chatty rendering of Iceland’s ancient parliament. . . . -Kate Molleson on BBC Scottish Symphony’s performance of ‘Sporgýla’ in The Guardian October 2014
“Gudmundur Steinn Gunnarsson’s glistening “Grafgata“ . . .” -Steve Smith on Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s performance of ‘Grafgata’ for The New York Times in April 2013
“A pointillist st-st-st-st-stroke from an Icelandic composer whose Autechresque sense of rhythm blurs the lines between organized, random, and sheer madness. He makes a 27-instrument ensemble sound like rain falling on a Guitar Center.” -Christopher R. Weingarten for SPIN magazine about ‘Horpma’ on the end of year avant list 2011.
“. . . To most this will sound like music for transcendental meditation, but what it really is is the new in contemporary classical composition.” -Thomas R. Erdmann on ‘Horpma’ in Jazz Review July 2011
Recent and upcoming events:
- April 13th Apartment House performs ‘Sitt hvoru megin við þilið’ in Wigmore Hall, London, England
- May 15th Simon Halvarsson premiers a new piece, ‘Saddapadda’ at Varmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden
- September 4th Caput Ensemble release concert performing ‘Stífluhringurinn’ in its entirety and a new piece at Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavík, Iceland
- November 2nd and 3rd the Opera ‘Gleðilegi Geðrofsleikurinn’ or ‘The Joyous Psychotic Play’ will be staged again on Óperudagar in Reykjavík, Iceland