Viktor Orri Árnason & Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir - Piano Poems (EP) (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

In November 2023, composer, conductor and producer Viktor Orri Árnason and soprano and visual artist Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir released Poems, their collaborative debut album. Its ten tracks drew on the pair’s shared cultural heritage, setting poems by Icelandic poets past and present, as well as lyrics by Árnason and Guðmundsdóttir themselves.

Now the two artists have returned to the studio to rework five of those tracks for solo piano. The results can be heard on the forthcoming digital EP Piano Poems. “Each piece,” say Árnason and Guðmundsdóttir, “is a little exploration into themes that often sit quietly within us: the interplay of light and shadow, the tangible meeting the ethereal, and those moments of solitude that speak to a deeper companionship we find in ourselves.” Piano Poems is set for release on 12 April. “Words and Dreams” will be issued on World Sleep Day, Friday 15 March, while “Darkness of the Night” will be released on Thursday 28 March, in celebration of World Piano Day.

Piano Poems, which also includes reimagined versions of “Being”, “To the Goddess of Poetry” and “The Body”, works as an evocative whole, its abstract melodies and tender chords woven into a rich tapestry of sound and silence. Like Poems, it offers a reflective space in which thoughts, dreams and the essence of being are articulated through the universal language of music. “It’s an invitation to explore those ineffable aspects of our existence,” explains Árnason. “It’s a humble offering to the vast universe of our collective human experience, crafted with the hope that it might, in its quiet way, touch the soul.”

Tracklist:
01. Darkness of The Night
02. Being
03. Words and Dreams
04. To The Goddess of Poetry
05. The Body


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