Phonemes – HLJORÐ

Sunday June 7th at 8 p.m., the current cycle of the concert series Phonemes will come to and end at Hafnarborg, as Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, artist and poet, and Svanur Vilbergsson, classical guitarist, perform a special concert. The title of the concert – HLJORÐ – is a neologism coined by Ásta Fanney by combining the Icelandic words “hljóð” (e. sound) and “orð” (e. word), in an attempt to fuse these two signifiers of meaning in one and the same word. On one hand, there is the assumed meaning of words and, on the other, there is the contextual meaning of sounds, giving new meaning to utterances based on their context and combination. At the concert, new and recent works by Ásta Fanney will be performed, as well as classical guitar solo pieces by Hafliði Hallgrímsson, Hugi Guðmundsson and Scott Wollschleger, performed by Svanur.

Phonemes is a concert series dedicated to presenting music by various contemporary composers from the 20th and 21st century with a focus on small settings of chamber music. Light is shed upon subjects of contemporary music today and the artistic research of composers in the abstract world of poetry of sounds. The name of the series, Phonemes, references the basic unit of language’s phonology, the phoneme, which can be combined and re-arranged with other phonemes to form meaningful units, such as words or morphemes. The concert series is supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. The concert was originally scheduled to take place in April, but was postponed due to public health concerns.

Tickets are available at Hafnarborg. General admission is 2,500 ISK, whereas admission for seniors and students is 1,500 ISK.