Anna Thorvaldsdottir

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s (b. 1977) “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (NY Times) and “striking” (Guardian) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow.

Anna’s “detailed and powerful” (Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy, as well as commissions by many of the world’s top orchestras. Her symphony-scale AION was premiered by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anna-Maria Helsing, in May 2019. Her latest orchestral work CATAMORPHOSIS was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko in January 2021 and will receive its UK and US premieres by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. And “while [she] has made the symphony orchestra her own,” according to Gramophone Magazine, “her chamber music is cut from the same cloth and somehow sounds with much the same combination of immensity and intimacy.” Enigma – Anna’s “mesmerising” (BBC Music Magazine) first string quartet – was recorded and released by Sono Luminus in August 2021, performed by the Spektral Quartet, and was one of the New York Times’s recordings of the year (“a masterly entrance to the genre”). Portrait albums with Anna’s works have appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, Sono Luminus, and Innova.

Anna’s music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations – such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Carnegie Hall. Among the many other orchestras and ensembles that have performed her music include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony,  Orchestre de Paris, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, BBC Singers, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Portrait concerts with Anna’s music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, London’s Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester’s Nachtmusic der Moderne series, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s Point Festival. Other venues include the BBC Proms, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Lucerne Summer Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Helsinki’s Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. Invited lectures and presentations include Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Anna is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego.