María Huld Markan: Aequora

María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir (b. 1980)  began studying violin at the Reykjavík College of Music and continued with composition at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. While in college she was a founding member of a string quartet which later became the group amiina. She works frequently with pop artists such as Sigur Rós, Spiritualized, and Lee Hazlewood, and has played on the soundtracks for films. In 2012 she received an honorary mention at the International Rostrum of Composers for her work Sleeping Pendulum. Her compositions include Clockworking (for string trio and electronics) for Nordic Affect, and the scores for director Mike Ott’s films Pearblossom Hwy (2012) and Lake Los Angeles (2014).

María Huld writes the following about her work: “Aequora has its origins in another work, for piano and electronics, which was premiered at the Reykjavík Arts Festival in 2015. I used that work as a kind of skeleton, adding to it, cutting and pasting, changing and improving, until a new, independent work was born. The title Aequora is taken from Nox, a book of poems by the Canadian poet Ann Carson. The Latin word means a smooth surface, and I allowed myself to be inspired by the feeling of the poem, and the sound of the word itself.”