Sono Luminus Announces New Recording OCCURRENCE

Sono Luminus has announced the January 22, 2021 worldwide release of Occurrence, a new recording from the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (ISO). Conducted by the ISO's Principal Guest Conductor Daníel Bjarnason and recorded at Harpa in Reykjavík, Iceland in February 2018, December 2019 and March 2020, Occurrence features music by leading Icelandic composers Bjarnason (Violin Concerto), Veronique Vaka (Lendh), Haukur Tómasson (In Seventh Heaven), Þuríður Jónsdóttir (Flutter), and Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson (Adagio) plus the virtuosic and compelling soloists Pekka Kuusisto, violin and Mario Caroli, flute. Sono Luminus' album package for Occurrence includes both CD and Pure Audio Blu-ray with 9.1 Auro-3D, Dolby Atmos 7.1.4, and 5.1 DTS-MA versions, as well as the mShuttle application containing FLAC and MP3 audio files. Occurrence is the third and final installment in a trilogy of albums from Sono Luminus and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, following the 2019 release of Concurrence, currently nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Orchestral Performance Category, and the 2017 release of Recurrence.

"This is the third and last album of the ISO project, dedicated to recording the music of Icelandic composers with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. It has been a remarkable collaboration and one I am thrilled to have been a part of," says Daníel Bjarnason, whose Violin Concerto is included on this album and whose work Emergence was included in the first volume of this series, and who conducts the ISO on all three recordings. "I want to thank the entire team at Sono Luminus for their wonderful wizardry. I also want to thank all my fellow composers for writing such beautiful music, and of course the orchestra and soloists for embracing this project with enthusiasm. I hope these recordings manage to find their way to many curious ears around the globe."

Of the music on Occurrence, Steve Smith writes in the liner notes for the album (excerpted):

"Bjarnason's own Violin Concerto, scarcely requires introduction, having proved its merits and attractions already on concert platforms around the globe since its 2017 world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. Pekka Kuusisto, the violinist for whom the piece was written, demonstrates his consummate skill as a virtuoso, a collaborator and - not least - a whistler, and the orchestral accompaniment, no surprise, is vivid and alert ... [In Flutter], commissioned to create a piece marking the centenary of Olivier Messiaen, who famously incorporated birdsong into his music through transcription, Þuríður Jónsdóttir accompanies solo flute and orchestra with sampled grasshoppers and crickets - who prove charming accompanists. A similar continuity of technique and spirit applies in Tómasson's In Seventh Heaven, which ... eschews athletic display and histrionic gestures in favor of continuously shifting textures. The music, composed for the opening of Reykjavik's stunning Harpa Concert Hall, shimmers, glints, recedes, and jolts, transforming with the elemental unpredictability of light playing across Harpa's dramatic crystalline exterior ... Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson (1925-2005), a composer, pianist, conductor, and radio producer who completed his education at the Juilliard School, is viewed as Iceland's first 12-tone composer, and among its electronic-music pioneers, as well. But in Adagio, composed in 1980 after a silence of nearly a decade, Jóhannsson abandoned his previous tools, embracing instead a melancholy lyricism all his own ... Veronique Vaka, a Canadian composer and cellist, completed her master's degree in Reykjavik, and then settled in southern Iceland. She based Lendh on her impressions of Krýsuvík, a gorgeously rugged geothermal area 35 kilometers away from the capital."

About the Soloists:

Finnish violinist, conductor, and composer Pekka Kuusisto performs with orchestras around the world in programs spanning a broad range of repertoire. He is Artistic Director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and a Collaborative Partner of the San Francisco Symphony. In 2020-21, he is Artist in Residence with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and at Milton Court at the Barbican. An advocate of new music, his upcoming and recent premieres include concertos and chamber works by Bryce Dessner, Djuro Zivkovic, Enrico Chapela, Sauli Zinovjev, Calliope Tsoupaki, Philip Venables, Andrea Tarrodi, plus concertos written for him by Bjarnason, Anders Hillborg, and Nico Muhly. In addition to this album, his recordings appear on the BIS, Ondine, and Deutsche Grammophon labels.

Born in Italy, Mario Caroli is one of the most successful solo flutists in today's international concert scene. He appears regularly in the greatest concert halls of the world including the Philharmonic Halls of Berlin and Cologne, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Opéra Garnier in Paris, New York's Lincoln Center, Oji Hall, Suntory Hall and Opera City House of Tokyo, the Parco della Musica in Rome, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Bruxelles, and Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw.