Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson studied composition at Mills College and Iceland Academy of the Arts and at summer courses in Kürten and Darmstadt. He has had several teachers such as Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, John Bischoff, Hilmar Þórðarsson, Atli Ingólfsson and Úlfar Ingi Haraldsson. Guðmundur Steinn focuses on music in a non-pulsating rhythm. This has required the use of animated notation, where music is read from moving computer graphics instead of an ordinary page. The music makes various explorations of timbre and tuning. Most pieces are fixed and are the same each time in the notation whereas others explore the field of open instrumentation. Guðmundur Steinn is an active member of the Icelandic composer collective called S.L.Á.T.U.R. and contributed to founding its festival Sláturtíð. He has also been involved in  the Jaðarber concert series and Fengjastrútur Ensemble.

​His music has been performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Adapter, CRUSH Ensemble, Ensemble l’Arsenale, Defun Ensemble, Aksiom Ensemble, Roberto Durante, Tinna Þosteinsdóttir, Mathias Ziegler, Markus Hohti and Timo Kinnunen. Guðmundur also runs his own group which is called Fersteinn and has been a vehicle for experimentation since 2010.

Í skuggsjá vængja þinna (Beneath your wings of darkly reflecting glass)

Ingmar Bergman and Philip K. Dick both made stories with titles that refer to The First Epistle to the Corinthians. It raises more questions than answers that both of these stories are about mental challenges, individuals who are not made for their times, so to speak.
In a culture of straight lines it seems as if it is desirable to increasingly make the world resemble a tax report. Sensitive individuals have a hard time coping with a very linear, self-interest oriented modernity where everything is measurable and life is just a linear piece of entertainment. It seems as if the clairvoyants, saints and mystics of our time might be locked away from society. Perhaps with involuntary incarceration, ECT, forced drugging or lost in some other type of drug daze. Therefore I say: Ask not what Jesus would do, but what you would do to Jesus. We won’t get an answer for now, but we can almost see the faint traces of it as if through a glass, darkly. . .