In April, as part of the Frequency Series I book at Constellation, I had the pleasure of presenting the Chicago debut of Nordic Affect, a remarkable quartet from Iceland who perform contemporary music on Baroque instruments—though admittedly you’re only likely to notice anything unusual about the instrumentation when Gudrun Óskarsdóttir plays harpsichord. Nordic Affect’s repertoire consists of all-new work written for the ensemble by other Icelandic composers, many of them women (like all four members of the group). I was knocked out by the quartet’s 2015 debut, Clockworking (Sono Luminus), which undergirded its meditative ethereality with thick textures and structural rigor. Its follow-up, Raindamage (also on Sono Luminus), is even better.
Spiritual Singers, Ntsamina (Mississippi) Barry Altschul, Brahma (Sackville) Scott Worthington, Prism (Populist) Shirley Collins, Lodestar (Domino) Ellery Eskelin Trio, Willisau Live (Hatology)
