Legendary Icelandic musician, composer and Nordic Council Music Prize winner Gyða Valtýsdóttir, or simply Gyda, has just released an enchanting new video for the song “Air to Breath”, which will appear on her new album.
Composed by Daníel Bjarnason, Gyda says in a press release that the song “is the only piece on the record which was pre-released. I knew right away that I wanted to include it on the record. It is one of those composition that I feel I can totally merge with, the closes thing to describe it is feeling like I’m breathing it in the moment.”
The video itself was inspired by an idea Gyda had to depict a musician performing a composer’s song for them. To this end, she solicited the help of visual artist Ragnar Kjartansson to direct it. Allan Sigurdsson conducted the cinematography, amazingly all shot in one take.
“He has such talent turning banal ideas into something cool and unique,” Gyda writes. “It is a simple idea, I wanted to play the piece for the composer himself. There is this invisible deep connection between any interpreter and the composer of the music, I think about it a lot but specially when I play Air to Breath. Music can transport communication far beyond language, which I wanted to capture in the video.”
After reaching out to Gyda for comment, she elaborated further to the Grapevine on the relationship between composer and performer.
“When performing music by other composers I always feel that I create a personal relationship with them, whether that is Hildegard von Bingen or someone you can actually have a conversation with,” she said. “For me it was such a different feeling to perform music by composers that I related to and those I didn’t, it was so strong that I was sure that being a classical performer wasn’t for me. I simply didn’t feel that I should perform music by composers which I did not find a resonance with. It was interesting to try but I didn’t feel I could do them justice. The ultimate resonance is a sensation is that I’m fully channeling the composer, lending my body, instrument & craftmanship to their creation.”
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