NEW RECORDINGS

Aequora, Featuring Pianist Mina Gajić and Violinist Zachary Carrettin

March 3, 2025

2 MIN READ

Released on the Sono Luminus label, the disc explores music by contemporary Icelandic composers

The pianist Mina Gajić and violinist Zachary Carrettin, a husband-and-wife team who are now performing under the name of Mystery Sonata, have recently released their first disc together. Titled Aequora, the album is out on the Sono Luminus label on February 28, 2024.

The disc covers works by prominent Icelandic composers, including Aequora (by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir), First Escape (by Daníel Bjarnason), Notre Dame (by Páll Ragnar Pálsson), Reminiscense (by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir), and Re/fractions (by María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir).

The album centers on Aequora, a work for grand piano and electronics that Sigfúsdóttir originally wrote for the Iceland Arts Festival in 2015. The work was inspired by an extract from Anne Carson's book Nox. When Sigfúsdóttir first met Gajić and Carrettin, she mentioned that she had been thinking about adding another texture, another voice, to the piece, and so a new version which added the violin was born.

The work has no time signature, and is governed by the atmosphere of the electronics. While the piano part is fixed, Sigfúsdóttir describes the violin part as "a counterpoint to the other layers, creating tension and release."

You can purchase the album here.

"Collectively, this music seems to offer an alternate reality, a sound space that is distinct in each work and with each composer, and yet shared, almost as a collective consciousness, or at least a community with similar ideals expressed in music," Gajić said.

"Zachary and I traveled to Iceland to experience the landscapes and to meet with several composers, exploring their work and observing where the connections between their interests and ours as a duo seemed congruous."