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    A two disc set of Atmospheriques Vol. I (1 standard audio CD and 1 blu-ray audio disc) in a plastic jewel case.

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1.
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3.
4.
Clockworking 09:03
5.
ÓS 06:14

about

At the risk of getting doxxed by my musician colleagues, I’m going to divulge a dark truth about classical music: it’s never as captivating or molecule-altering for anyone as it is for us on stage.

Which is why I often find classical records, especially those of the orchestral persuasion, so underwhelming. So not…immediate. Which is why I am approaching zealot status in my admiration for Sono Luminus and the way in which it submerges listeners within reach of the Atlantis that is the on-stage experience. Which is why, save for live performance, the often inimitable new-music originating in, or in proximity to, Iceland (homeland to an unreasonable percentage of the composers living rent-free in my headphones for more than a decade) has found its most ardent advocate and most clarion amplifier in Winchester, Virginia. Certainly its exceptional national orchestra has.

Despite a bewildering insistence by journalists to characterize music written by those with Icelandic surnames as a monolith, the entries on this tracklist are as singular as hand blown glass. The inclusion of American sonic clairvoyant Missy Mazzoli is a helpful geographic foil here, but there is one element fusing all of these inventions: Your person is about to feel minuscule or massive, by contrast to – or motivated by – these sounds.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is often intimidatingly cyclopean, and Catamorphosis at times mimics the cosmic indifference of Lovecraft-ian deities, but it simultaneously introduces an iridescent hope I have not encountered before in her music. Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) catapults us from one end of a pulsing solar system to the other while Daníel Bjarnason’s From Space I Saw Earth improbably stretches perspective from earth to the moon and back, seeming somehow both terrestrial and paranormal within a single phrase. Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir’s Clockworking for Orchestra bridges a similar expanse, coexisting within the measurable realm of time-keeping…and the immeasurable realm of what occurs as the seconds tick by. Is Bára Gísladóttir’s ÓS gasping in air, or desperately exhaling? Whatever your observation, and as with every waypoint on this illusory itinerary, the answer is likely: both.

– Doyle Armbrust

credits

released April 28, 2023

Producer: Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir
Recording, Mixing & Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Editing Engineer: Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir
Assistant Engineer: Joshua Frey
Photography: p. 2 - Saga Sig; pp. 7/8 - Ari Magg; pp. 9A/12 - AnnaMaggý;
p. 9B - Caroline Tompkins; p. 11 - Lilja Birgisdóttir
Cover Painting: “Water and Mist I”, Kristín Morthens - Oil, spray paint and pastels on canvas, 2022
Graphic Design: Joshua Frey
Liner Notes: Doyle Armbrust
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Blu-ray Production: Stefan Bock
Blu-ray Authoring: Michael T. Hoffmann, msm-studios

Recorded at Harpa Concert Hall, Reykjavík, Iceland
Norðurljós Recital Hall, November 12, 2021
Daníel Bjarnason, From Space I saw Earth
Conductors: Daníel Bjarnason, Eva Ollikainen, Kornilios Michailidis
Concertmaster: Sigrún Eðvaldsdóttir
Crotales: Members of ISO Youth Orchestra, LHÍ, and The Bell choir of Reykjanesbær Music School
Eldborg Hall, May 9 – 12, 2022
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, CATAMORPHOSIS
Missy Mazzoli, Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Clockworking for Orchestra
Bára Gísladóttir, ÓS
Conductor: Daníel Bjarnason
Concertmaster: Vera Panitch

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about

Sono Luminus Boyce, Virginia

We’re a classical record label and acoustic music recording studio located 70 miles west of Washington, DC.
We specialize in ultra-high fidelity stereo and surround recordings.

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