Icelandic cellist, singer, and composer Gyða Valtýsdóttir, a founder of the band múm and 2019 winner of the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, releases Epicycle II on her label DiaMond in collaboration with Sono Luminus.

Epicycle II, which was produced by Gyða and mixed with Jónsi, features music written for her, and/or in collaboration with her, by eight of Iceland’s most compelling composers – Ólöf Arnalds, Daníel Bjarnason, Úlfur Hansson, Jónsi, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Kjartan Sveinsson, Skúli Sverrisson, and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. The album is a sequel to her highly acclaimed first solo album from 2017, Epicycle, on which Gyða created personal renditions of written music spanning over 2000 years. An epicycle refers to the geometric model of the solar system by the Ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, in which a smaller circle’s centre moves around the circumference of a larger circle.

On Epicycle II, Gyða stretches the boundaries of genre even further, selecting composers who all have created their own unique sonic environments. The outcome is an expansive and colourful landscape, varied but connected in profound unity through Gyða’s highly personal touch.

A founding member of the experimental and groundbreaking band múm as a teenager in the late 1990s, Gyða later studied classical cello and improvisation in Reykjavik, St. Petersburg, and Basel. Known for her deeply personal and organic performances, she has worked with a varied group of artists across genres, performed concerts around the world, and composed music for films. She earned a double master’s degree from the Hochschule für Musik in Basel where her main teachers were cellist and composer Thomas Demenga and violist, composer, and improviser Walter Fähndrich.