Starting in 1980, Myrkir Músíkdagar (Dark Music Days) is one of Iceland’s most enduring music festivals, playing host to radical ideas in the field of contemporary music. Happening between January 29 to February 2, Dark Music Days features 24 separate performances, ranging from a children-oriented sound bath and a music-focused video game, to the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra’s performances of new works by acclaimed composers Bára Gísladóttir and Kjartan Sveinsson.
“This is a festival that’s trying to safeguard avant garde music in Iceland, and there really isn’t a corresponding function that has managed to achieve that,” composer Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir praises. On January 30, she is set to premiere her new composition Intraloper at the festival, only two weeks after releasing her forthcoming album Skinweeper.
Intraloper is so fresh off the music sheet, Bergrún hasn’t managed to place it into words yet. Performed by the Berlin-based contemporary brass ensemble Apparat, Bergrún looks to push the quartet to its sonic extremities. “They’re incredibly skilled in everything pertaining to producing sounds which are not bound to pure tones. So the colour palette is extremely broad and I’m playing around with it,” she notes. Describing the process, Bergrún explains that she conceived of a sound “which might not exist,” ultimately playing around to identify it through iteration after iteration.
“Before I met them, I had a set of goals in mind concerning the approximate sounds and concepts which relate to the defiance of…” she struggles for words. “I’m still finishing the piece,” she admits with a smile. “It’s difficult to pair words to a piece because it’s so abstract. But first and foremost, I think it relates to a kind of doomsday anxiety. Climate anxiety,” Bergrún clarifies. “There’s a lot of claustrophobia.”
Star-studded horn player
Originally studying the French horn, music wasn’t necessarily Bergrún’s primary choice of profession, opting to study philosophy at the University of Iceland. In 2007, she was offered to travel with Björk as part of her Volta tour. “So I quit the university, but continued my music studies. By my graduation I had started composing my own music,” Bergrún chronicles. While studying composition at the Iceland University of Arts, Bergrún was offered to tour with another Icelandic music export, Sigur Rós.
However, neither Björk nor Sigur Rós had such an effect on Bergrún’s career as Ilan Volkov, who staffed the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra as conductor from 2011-2014. During his tenure, Ilan brought the experimental music festival Tectonics to Reykjavík, commissioning a piece by Bergrún to be performed by the orchestra. One of the works included Bergrún’s composition Esoteric Mass For Winds, where a woodwind quartet was ostensibly conducted by a spinning dot in perpetual orbit.
“It pushed me forward,” Bergrún reminisces, noting that Tectonics allowed her to meet composer heavyweights. “Ilan Volkov left a big impression on me because I got to know my superheroes, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff — these huge role models to me.”
Visually inclined
With more than 40 composition projects on her roster, Bergrún’s methods explore the push and pull of play and control between conductor, performers and the audience, oftentimes through sonic and visual means.
“I create these spaces which are under varying amounts of control, where I have varying amounts of control over the situation,” Bergrún explains, challenging the label of improvisation. “If I allow improv in my works, I hold the reins close to me.”
For Bergrún, the minute details concerning layout of each concert space has enormous influence on her work. “My favourite pieces are those where I know where they will be performed and who’s going to perform it. Then I know not everything is on the table.”
“I’m pretty sensitive to staging because I start to analyse everything — except for the traditional concert stage maybe,” she admits. “I don’t do anything out of randomness. If I use randomness, it has a reason. There’s always a reason.”
Her commitment to the correct execution of her compositions stems from Bergrún’s fascination with public expectation. “In a traditional concert setting, people come in, listen to the music — they know roughly what’s going to happen,” she starts. “But as soon as the presentation is slightly skewed, whether it’s the placement of the instruments or the lighting, you’ve already removed any types of rules the audience expects,” she continues.
“It opens up the possibility to introduce ‘strange sounds’,” she air quotes. “Unconciously, you can remove the rules of the game people are used to dealing with to form a blank slate.”
Documenting the inevitable
In the finishing stages of “Intraloper,” Bergrún is also preparing her forthcoming three-track composition album Skinweeper. Out via Smekkleysa, Skinweeper is Bergrún’s first LP, primarily based on her graduate project Areolae Undant, which featured Bergrún constructing an interactive light sculpture. “I made a set where I have a light, triggering a system which electronically transmits a light among the players and conducts them over the course of 15 minutes,” she shares.
While this isn’t Bergrún’s first album release, she admits having to conform to the static nature of the medium. “Especially that first piece, it was written to be different each time it’s played,” she asserts. “I did record it at the time, thinking I’d have to document it. As time passes, I realise that documentation is important. Everything will disappear. But this is an attempt to extend its lifetime a bit.”
Dark Music Days take place in Reykjavík on January 29 to February 1. Intraloper will be premiered on Friday, January 30 at 19:00. Festival pass is 18.000 ISK. For full details, visit darkmusicdays.is. Skinweeper is out January 17 on physical and digital formats.
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