Dark Matter

“I am going to say this as emphatically as I possibly can. This album contains some of the most beautiful music I have ever had the mortal pleasure of hearing… Forget about what you thought beauty was about. [This music will] cut into your heart like a scalpel.”
—Opus on Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson’s Academy Award®-nominated Children of Nature soundtrack

“[Zwilich] has written a striking, sumptuous and somber work that reaffirms her high standing among American composers… This is an immediately affecting work that may find wide popularity – succinct, mostly tonal, and ‘romantic’ in its directness of expression.”
—Tim Page, New York Newsday, on Symphony No. 3

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson holds a special place in Iceland and its music scene. He has worked with Björk and members of Sigur Rós, contributed deeply emotional scores to award-winning films, worked with directors such as Jane Campion, won the European Film Composer of the Year Award and was nominated for the 2017 Harpa Lifetime Achievement Award. Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (USA) is the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, is a four-time Grammy nominee, and was designated Musical America’s Composer of the Year in 1999. She composed her Symphony No. 3 for the New York Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary. The concert opens with a WSO commission by Karen Sunabacka (Winnipeg). #DryColdConversations draws inspiration from Manitobans’ impressions of winter, collected by the composer through conversations on Facebook, with refugees, Métis relatives and friends.

Presented with the support of The University of Manitoba Icelandic Department, Arni Thorsteinson and Susan Glass, and Peter Johnson

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