BERGRÚN SNÆBJÖRNSDÓTTIR – PORTRAIT CONCERT

A text/graphic score calls for the performers to predetermine a sonic path unique to their own individual interpretation; they are instructed to navigate a sequence of changes in harmony with circular movements. Performers can come to mutual agreements on aspects of their individual performances regarding intensity/tonality/etc., but this is not necessary or necessarily wanted. Seeking to excavate an individual performer’s fingerprint, what becomes interesting here is how they choose to deliberate and deliver their navigation. Their performances are then collapsed together so a listener/observer can experience the contrast of these interpretations of the “same” moment – through conflating time, the activation of the vertical exposes the manifoldness of the horizontal.
The resulting materials of audio/video are installed in multichannel form onto gallery walls.

Agape was nominated for “work of the year” in the classical/contemporary category at the Icelandic Music Awards 2022

Quorum Sensing – Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir

Quorum – the minimum number of entities needed for a deliberation.
Quorum Sensing – a mechanism by which life forms regulate gene expression through the use of signal molecules, allowing communication and coordination of group behaviour.

While almost solistic in the sense that it is becomes the principal violinists’ responsibility to drive and shape the piece, the contstruct explores the ensemble’s reflexes and response times as an organism, working together. Imagine a microscopic life form contracting their many appendages and releasing the engergy in multifaceted bursts to manouver around a limited space.
The rythmic instructions of the score then become a blueprint for action in the same way gene expression gives organisms a fundamental order of things, the ensemble responding to circumstances and the pacing of other actions within context. The aim is not to keep very strictly to the time spans given, but to use them as reference to position the material given, and in relationship with the other performers.