MÖRSUGUR (poetic tale fyrir voice and audiovisuals)
Heiða Árnadóttir, Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir og Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir
Harpa Norðurljós
7 PM
January 25th
Mörsugur is an opera for voice and audiovisuals created from a poetic tale by Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir. Located in folkloric Icelandic nature, the fragmented storytelling ventures on frequent detours on behalf of mythic-like heroines on which the narrator is built upon. Made in a creative collaboration between Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir, Heiða Árnadóttir and Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir, the piece depicts the nuances of being in between worlds, of light and darkness, and memories and the present. Visuals by Ásdís Birna Gylfadóttir.
Programme:
MÖRSUGUR (poetic tale fyrir voice and audiovisuals)
Composers Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir og Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir/ Poetic tale: Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir / 2022 "50 - premiere
The team:
Voice: Heiða Árnadóttir
Composers: Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir og Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir Dramaturge : Kolbrún Anna Björnsdóttir
Video art: Ásdís Birna Gylfadóttir
Stage and costumes: Heiða Eiríksdóttir
About the performers
The Icelandic singer Heiða Árnadóttir has in her career emphasized on the performance of modern music, folk, jazz, experimental as well as lied music. She has premiered many pieces of Icelandic composers such as Gunnar Karel Másson, Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir, Þórunn Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Þóranna Björnsdóttir, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson. and Þórunn Björnsdóttir.
In addition to numerous concerts in Iceland, where she has premiered various compositions with Ensemble Adapter and Caput, Heiða has also performed in Holland, Belgium, France, India, Sweden and Denmark. She has also performed during Nordic Music Days, Iceland Airwaves, Skálholt Summer Festival, Siglufjörður Folk Festival, Reykjavík Jazz Festival and various foreign festivals.
Heiða has composed songs and lyrics and is the singer in the band Mógil, which has issued four Cds. Their CD „Ró“ was nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards in 2008 but their newest CD „Adventa“ , based on Gunnar Gunnarsson´s famous novel of the same name, was issued by the German publishing company Winter and Winter in 2019. .
Heiða:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1UAlVwInz8p_ulQGZi5WwQ
heimasíða: https://heidaarnadottir.wixsite.com/heidaarna
Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir is a composer, poet and vocal artist. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Artistic Research Center at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Ragnheiður holds a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Iceland and a BA in Composition from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. She is a member of the art group Hlökk, the audiovisual collective SÚL_VAD, and the Viennese artist space Die Labile Botschaft.
Her practice centres interdisciplinary research on voice through embodiment and sustainability. Working with de- and reconstructing techniques, she explores and forges webs of connectivity with storytelling in unsung places. Ragnheiður's pieces have been presented internationally in various forms, ranging from hidden sound installations in a forest to theatrical vocal performances.
Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir (1988- ) is a composer, pianist and jazz vocalist. She received her BA in composition from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2014 and her MA in composition from the same institution in 2018. Ásbjörg is engaged with various musical activities. In addition to her composition career, she conducts a children's choir, teaches music theory and piano. Her music has been performed by Caput, Hljómeyki, Duo Harpverk, Elektra Ensemble, Reykjavík Cathedral Choir and IMPRA. Her music has been performed at the Dark Music Days Festival in Iceland; by Duo Harpverk in 2012 and by Foot in the Door ensemble from The Hartt School (University of Hartford) in 2015. Ásbjörg has also worked on other musical projects such as recordings, arrangements and musical research. In the summer of 2013 and 2018 she undertook a research project on; the music of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson and jazz in Iceland, funded by the Icelandic Student Innovation Fund. The research project about jazz in Iceland is in collaboration with Þorbjörg Daphne Hall and Oxford University Press. Ásbjörg released a book with 12 of her new songs for children’s choir in April 2019.
Ás Dís (Ásdís Birna Gylfadóttir) is an Icelandic artist, who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from AKI ArtEZ in Enschede, The Netherlands in 2022. Her focus is mainly on video in combination with experimental sound design, performance and installations. Together with composer Ragnheiður Erla, she founded SÚL_VAD art collective, an audio/visual collaboration between the two. She is also a member of RASK, a collective of young Icelandic artists that work at the intersection of art and technology.