Eydís Evensen, piano

Sinfonietta Rīga String Quartet

The composer and pianist Eydís Evensen was born and raised in a sparsely populated town in the harsh northern part of Iceland where she would listen to all styles of music while watching snow storms rage behind her window ‒ from Pyotr Tchaikovsky to Led Zeppelin. She started to learn the piano at the age of six.

Evensen finds inspiration for her music in the Icelandic nature and the minimalism of Philip Glass. In love with classical music since early childhood, she has been building her own personal world of sound over the years. Evensen’s piano pieces are rooted in the Nordic tradition where music frequently conjures up natural landscapes, creating special emotional harmonies of moods and colours. In its own way, her music is reminiscent of the first wave of Icelandic indie music that took the world by storm between 2014 and 2017. The flowing sound of Eydís Evensen’s piano invokes certain nostalgia and yearning but also light and hope.

2021 saw the release of Eydís Evensen’s debut album ‘Bylur’ (the word translates from Icelandic as ‘snowstorm’), a confident entrance on the international scene followed by concerts in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid.

Joining Eydís Evensen on the stage of Cēsis Concert Hall, the Sinfonietta Rīga String Quartet will complement the sound world created by the Icelandic musician.