Sono Luminus has now released the world premiere recording of Ubique (2022), a 45-minute chamber work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. The piece was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Cheswatyr Foundation, Kurt Chauviere and Density Arts for Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project. The album features the original ensemble of musicians who played the live world premiere at Carnegie Hall in May 2023: Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; and Cory Smythe, piano; with Levy Lorenzo, live sound. They will also perform the piece’s West Coast US Premiere at the Ojai Festival on June 7.
Ubique lives on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion. Through a combination of sounds, pitches, and textural nuances, low deep drones envelop lyrical materials and harmonies that breathe in and out of focus throughout the progress of the piece. The flow of the music is primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction — of various kinds and durations — as it streams with subtle interruptions and frictions but ever moving forward in the overall structure.
The work is inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance - throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the infinite.
As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such – it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece.
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Parts V and VIII were recently featured on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered as early contenders for a place on their Best of 2025 list.
