Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Ubique
Sono Luminus

According to The Guardian, Anna Thorvaldsdottir's natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, which in her hands “is reborn as a natural organism.” This world premiere recording of UBIQUE (pronounced “oo-bee-kway”) might argue otherwise, however, when the Icelandic composer's work lends itself as effectively to the intimacy of a chamber presentation. In place of the epic sweep of a piece delivered by, say, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, UBIQUE is performed by Claire Chase (flute, bass flute, contrabass flute), Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods (cellos), and Cory Smythe (piano), with Levy Lorenzo, live sound.

As pivotal to the forty-five-minute work's genesis was Chase, as UBIQUE was co-commissioned for her Density 2036 project and is the tenth chapter in its series. Spearheaded by the flutist, it's a twenty-four-year-spanning initiative that is working towards establishing a new repertory for the flute and will conclude on the centenary of Edgard Varèse's 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. By the time the project is finished, Chase will have commissioned, premiered, and recorded a new program of flute music for every one of those twenty-four years. In the case of UBIQUE, the work received its live premiere in May 2023 at Carnegie Hall and was recorded by the same musicians five months later at a studio in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Structured in eleven parts and described by Thorvaldsdottir as living “on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion,” UBIQUE is representative of her work in accentuating mood and texture over conventional melodic motives and symphonic development. Her statement that the music's flow is “primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction” is also wholly consistent with the character her material often assumes. It is less a traditional musical construction than an elemental phenomenon rendered into musical form and shaped to advance with patient deliberation. Absorption into a given work's sound-world is facilitated by such strategies and the material's meditation-inducing potency. Her music's been aptly described as “an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other.”

As mentioned, UBIQUE is in a sense as much Chase's project as Thorvaldsdottir,'s but the flutist, while her playing is central to the work, embeds herself into the overall fabric and acts less as the featured soloist and more one of five integral contributors to the sound-world. Enhancing the work's impact, the recording replicates its in-concert delivery when everything on the release is a single live take, with the musicians interacting in real-time and the pre-constructed electronics folded into the performance.

After emerging from a percolating rumble, the work starts to take shape with flute and piano notes congealing around ghostly voice utterances. A general sense of foreboding pervades the opening minutes as aggressive cello flourishes and low-register bowings accent wind-smeared drifts. Chase's flute dances in amongst the ponderous expression created by her partners before violently piercing the reverberant silence at the start of the second part. The music segues between plaintive and aggressive episodes, with the mood advancing rapidly from ominous calm to nightmarish agitation and back again. UBIQUE groans portentously at one moment, ascends upwards rapturously at another.

In bringing the piece into being, Chase, Kleijn, Parker Woods, and Smythe show themselves to be immensely sensitive to the composer's vision. They impressively execute parts that hew to an orthodox musical form, but they're also wholly capable of physically giving voice to the work's atmospheric dimension. The sombre, angst-ridden ambiance the players cultivate during the sixth part, for example, veritably oozes mystery and tragedy in equal measure. Part eight, on the other hand, becomes a riveting showcase for the amazing vocal effects Chase is capable of generating through her instrument.

April 2025