The title “The Best Version of Myself” sounds, at first glance, arrogant, self-assured and narcissistic. On closer inspection, the title reveals the thread of the compositions collected in the album that the composer and performer Mathias Monrad Møller recorded with the soloist ensemble PHØNIX 16, Sebastian Berweck, Carola Schaal and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. For Møller, the phenomenon of narcissism is more than a pathology of our days. Especially the myth about the impossible love between Narcissus and the nymph Echo reveals important elements that characterise Møller’s work. While Narcissus represents the dimension of the visual, the nymph Echo literally stands for the acoustic and the world of sound. As we know, echo also means reverb. Imitating and creating sounds; delay and fade-out; action-reaction – these characteristics of echoes are central strategies of singing for Møller. The composer and singer aims at exploring possibilities to overcome what is generally treated as a “right” or “wrong” sung tone. It is music that is composed but does not require a score and thus becomes “performatively present”. It is music that is easy to play, but neither banal nor simple.

Mathias Monrad Møller is a composer and singer. He was born in Denmark and grew up in Germany where he was part of the Thomaner-Choir in Leipzig. Møller studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main, completed his bachelor's degree in voice at the “Hanns Eisler” University of Music in Berlin and his master's degree at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Between 2017 and 2020 he was a member of the Royal Opera Academy and is regularly engaged at the Royal Danish Opera. His focus is on Johann Sebastian Bach and contemporary repertoire. Compositions on behalf of the Hessischer Rundfunk, the Klang Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival, the soloist ensemble PHØNIX16, the Mocrep Chicago, the Aarhus Unge Tonekunstnere, the Aarhus Symfoniorkester and many more. Møller's compositions have been performed at Unerhörte Musik Berlin, Eight Bridges Cologne, Waverly Project at New York University, Young Nordic Music Days in Reykjavik 2012, Oslo 2013, and Reykjavik 2017, as well as at the Nordic Music Days Copenhagen 2015.