Norderney - Sea Sounds Festival

The wonderful chamber orchestra Orchester im Treppenhaus hosts a festival on the german island Norderney in the North Sea every summer. The musicians spend about a month there, hosting over 50 concerts and various events, incl. concerts for schoolchildren and singalongs. They invited me to come this year and sing a concert at The Sea Sounds Festival with fabulous young pianist Alexander Vorontsov and we sang and played a very colourful program there at the end of August.

We played a few Icelandic and nordic songs, then some Debussy and Strauss and mixed in a few arias, Glitter and be gay and such fun.
If you have a chance to hear Alexander live in concert, I strongly recommend that you do, he’s a wonderful pianist. Unfortunately I don’t have any videos or recordings from this lovely evening, but here are a few pictures.

Kafka Fragments

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Kafka-Fragments in Berlin/Chemnitz and Reykjavík

The masterpiece and cycle of Kafka Fragments by György Kurtág is based on prose texts from Franz Kafka's diaries and from posthumously published letters and stories. The texts, which range from quick jottings to sketches for stories, permit a large variety of musical settings.

György Kurtág (b. 1926) is the best known worldwide and most frequently played living Hungarian composer.

Elfa Rún Kristindóttir studied violin at the Freiburg and Leipzig conservatories. As a soloist and chamber musician, she performs throughout the world in renowned concert halls and festivals. As first violin, she performs with ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin or the Concerto Köln.

22.01.20 in Berlin: Kultursalon Die Flaneure https://kultursalon-dieflaneure.de/veranstaltungen/

24.01.20 in Chemnitz: https://weltecho.eu/

27.01.20 in Reykjavík: https://mengi.net/

Gleðilega hátíð!

Händel’s Messiah at Hallgrímskirkja

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On the 7th and 8th of December I finally sang Messiah for the first time, (except when I sang in the Ísafjörður Festival Choir in I think 1999!) and the Icelandic Radio recorded the first concert. They played it on the radio yesterday evening and here one can have a listen until the 24th of March 2020.

Soloists: Herdís Anna Jónasdóttir, David Erler, Martin Vanberg og Jóhann Kristinsson.

The Hallgrímskirkja Motet Choir and the International Baroque Orchestra.

Conductor: Hörður Áskelsson.