Tui Hirv and Páll Ragnar Pálsson to Release LAYERS on Sono Luminus
The married duo's album features guest artists Sóley, Skúli Sverrisson, Kaktus Einarsson, and Sander Saarmets.
Estonian vocalist Tui Hirv and Icelandic composer and guitarist Páll Ragnar Pálsson, a married duo, will release their new album, Layers, on Sono Luminus on October 23, 2026. The concept album brings together the spiritual and historical lineages of several Nordic folk songs through ambient interpretations that consider the works in their entirety: compositional form, emotional direction, historical context, social significance, and cultural purpose.
Layers showcases the many sides of the history behind music both secular and sacred and how its place in the lives of those who hear it can vary based on the time, place, language, and meaning that surrounds the music when it's found and integrated into daily life. Through the recording, Pálsson and Hirv shed light on the power of folk music to be both a lasting record of people and times past, as well as a living, evolving demonstration of the perspective seen and felt by people of today's vast and multicultural world.
The album contains 17 folk songs and hymns of various Nordic, Latin, and English origins.
Contemporary chamber music plays a significant part in Tui Hirv's artistic profile. While in Estonia, she worked with new music ensembles and occasionally premiered pieces written for her by local composers. Hirv's collaboration with her composer husband Páll Ragnar Pálsson has been especially fruitful, resulting in more than ten pieces for Hirv as soloist and ensembles of varying scale. They keep developing their musical language, walking new and unknown paths with every project.
After undergraduate studies at Iceland University of the Arts, Páll Ragnar Pálsson obtained a Master's and doctoral degree from Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2014. Dwelling in the musically intense environment of Tallinn and being a student of Helena Tulve added another cultural layer on Pálsson's indie rock background from 1990's Reykjavik and made him the artist he is today. During his formative years as a guitar player, Pálsson's sense of sound was refined in recording studios, perceiving music rather in masses of noise than melodic-harmonic patterns, rather in a physical and instinctive than an intellectual and analytical manner. Sounds and textures are thus still central to Pálsson's music.
As artists that also share foundations in academia, Pálsson and Hirv have explored the long, winding paths of origin behind the songs on Layers and come to a deep understanding of where this music fits in the lives of people from different nations, spanning many generations. Layers of spiritual singing reach seamlessly from Estonia – across the Swedish-speaking areas of Estonia to mainland Sweden and Norway and overseas to Iceland – making a stop in England where similar cultural processes took place earlier. Latin hymns translate into local languages, blend into folk tradition, get picked up again, make their way into art music directly or indirectly, and become a source of inspiration once again.
'For centuries, spiritual singing was an inseparable part of everyday life of mankind,' Hirv explains. 'It accompanied the course of day, course of life and course of year –– acting as a kind of measure to keep in touch with the flow of time. There were songs to sleep and wake by, to pray for God's mercy in all situations possible, and to maintain a harmonious and modest life. These songs travelled through Europe mostly with the help of Protestant pastors and songbooks, but blended into local folk heritage in every parish. Different versions of well-known chorales create a unifying web across Western culture while maintaining a distinct, irreplicable voice of the isolated communities. These songs, either straight from songbooks or transcribed during field trips by scholars of the early 20th century, make up the core of Layers.'
In their endeavor to connect these folk songs with modern day musicality and stylization, like many before them, Pálsson and Hirv chose carefully where to uphold and where to bend the lines of traditional conventions of western music, which give each song its original musical character and social purpose.
'We encounter these songs in an environment where boundaries between social classes, styles of music, scenes and venues get blurred over and over, each time according to a whole different logic,' Hirv says. 'We break a few canons, clichés and customs by approaching spiritual hymns with modern equipment, still making the vocals sound natural, timeless and unprocessed, vulnerable and enlightened. In our arrangements, we are aware of the tradition but treat the material with playfulness and a slight sense of irresponsibility. This is the layer we add to the heritage that has shaped our identities as individuals and nations, keeping the very core of human knowledge and spiritual existence alive and relevant.'
Beyond their intention to balance the history of the past and their creativity in the present, Pálsson and Hirv's arrangements add yet another layer to the hymn tradition.
Hirv explains in the album's liner notes: 'As a melodic element, we use notated transcriptions that educated musicians wrote down on their field trips to record the disappearing vocal heritage of Estonian villages. A big part of Estonian folklore is spiritual and has its roots in the Lutheran tradition. Going to church on Sundays and praising the Lord at home was a general practice. It was a natural part of existence equally in the ethnic Estonian and Swedish communities that lived side by side for many centuries. Texts were written down in psalmbooks but the melodies were learned by ear and passed on within the family.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, during the wave of national awakening, the Estonian student fraternity of Tartu University organized a wide-spread expedition of folk-song gathering all over Estonia that lasted for a number of summers. Secular songs were considered more original and valuable at the time than the ones developed from Lutheran hymns. For Estonian professional music life later on, the folk hymns have proved an invaluable source of inspiration and tokens of identity at difficult times. They underline Estonia's connection to Western culture while maintaining an irreplicable, unifying voice.'
About Tui Hirv
Singer and musicologist Tui Hirv was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1984. Tui Hirv graduated from Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with a BA degree in singing in 2007 and MA in musicology in 2009. From an early age and until moving to Iceland in 2013 she was very active in Estonia's vivid and highly professional scene of choral music. For a period of time she was a member of some of the most renowned vocal groups such as Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Vox Clamantis. Both ensembles place great emphasis on the music of Arvo Pärt, their fellow Estonian and one of the most performed composers at a global scale. Both ensembles have extensive international reach and regularly record albums for leading labels such as ECM New Series and Harmonia Mundi. The 2014 ECM release of Adam's Lament led by EPCC's founding conductor Tõnu Kaljuste contains a version of Pärt's L'Abbé Agathon for choir and chamber orchestra where Tui Hirv sings lead. The album received the GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance.
About Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Páll Ragnar Pálsson has ongoing collaborations with artists all over the world and his music has been performed by internationally renowned ensembles and orchestras in sought-after venues. In recent years, Páll has collaborated on several occasions with Sono Luminus. Atonement with a selection of chamber pieces was released in 2020, while Concurrence, a collaboration with Icelandic Symphony Orchestra featuring Quake was nominated for the GRAMMY Award in 2021. The Icelandic motion picture Quake directed by Tinna Hrafnsdóttir featured original music by Páll and Eðvard Egilsson, released on an album named Skjálfti by Sono Luminus in 2023. One of the highlights of recent years was the premiere of Páll's first symphony in April 2026 at the Harpa concert house in Reykjavík commissioned by Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Eva Ollikainen.
Tracklist
1. Nüüd hingvad inimesed (Now Rest Beneath Night's Shadow) [3:55]
2. Bred dina vida vingar (Thy Holy Wings O Savior) [3:05]
3. Mitt hjerte alltid vanker (My Heart Will Always Wander) [4:47]
4. Hátíð fer af höndum ein (Joyous Tides Do Now Begin) [2:49]
5. There Is No Rose Of Such Virtue [3:53]
6. Gjendines bådnlåt (Gjendine's Lullaby) [3:40]
7. In the Bleak Midwinter [3:36]
8. Nú kemur heimsins hjálparráð (Saviour of the Nations Come) [3:25]
9. Nüüd südant, inimene (Ye Sons of Men, Oh, Hearken) [5:07]
10. Jeesus kõige ülem hää (Jesus Is the Best of All Good Things) [3:04]
11. Kes Jumalat nii laseb teha (If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee) [3:54]
12. Oh Jeesus, Sinu valu (O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded) [3:21]
13. Ma vaatan üles mäele (I Gaze Up at the Hill) [4:01]
14. Kas sureb nii mu kõige armsam elu (Alas, Does My Most Beloved Life Thus Die?) [5:05]
15. Su hooleks ennast annan ma (My all I to my God commend) [3:10]
16. Nú er á himni og jörð (Now in Heaven and on Earth) [2:30]
17. The Snow it Melts the Soonest [3:36]
Total Time: [63:02]
Credits
Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Composer, Guitars, Electronics
Tui Hirv, Vocals, Piano (tracks 9, 17)
Sóley Stefánsdóttir, Accordion (track 17)
Skúli Sverrisson, Bass (track 10)
Kaktus Einarsson, Trumpet (track 12)
Sander Saarmets, Electronics (track 8)
Executive Producers: Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Tui Hirv
Arrangements: Tui Hirv and Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Recorded and Produced: Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Mixing: Eðvarð Egilsson
Mastering: Daniel Shores
Layout: Joshua Frey
Liner Notes: Tui Hirv and Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Artwork on cover: Valgerður Briem (1914-2002)
Artist portrait: Brynjar Gunnarsson
Recorded in Vesturbær, Reykjavík throughout 2025
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