I am Þorkell Nordal from Iceland but currently based in Helsinki. In my music I like to create musical environments where I invite the listener to dwell in – fluctuations and gradual processes over time bring narrative to my music. I mainly write music for the concert hall but I have also worked with site-specific sound installations. With a background as guitarist and choir singer in my native country Iceland I soon focused on composition. I pursued composition studies at the Iceland University of the Arts, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and the Sibelius Academy. My music has been performed by various musicians and ensembles in festivals such as Ung Nordisk Music, Musica Nova Helsinki, Tampere Biennale and Estonian

Orðfæri

Choir and percussion

The piece Orðfæri for mixed choir and percussion was commissioned by the Dómkórinn í Reykjavík (Reykjavík Cathedral Choir). The idea behind the piece was to explore the use of text in different ways than to illustrate a narrative or prescribe the atmosphere of the work. While most of the text is made up with certain phonetic quality in mind, the text used in the last movement is from fragments by poet Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson.