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Artist
Gyða Valtýsdóttir
12+ albums
icelandicambientcellonordicmodern classical
about
Gyða Valtýsdóttir (born 5 January 1982) is an Icelandic musician and multi-instrumentalist. Gyða began her music career in her early teens when she co-founded the experimental music pop-group Múm in the late 1990s together with Örvar Smárason, Gunnar Tynes and her twin sister Kristín Anna. She left the band after the release of Finally We Are No One (2002). In 2004 she graduated with B-Mus in instrumental studies from the Iceland University of the Arts where her main teacher was cellist Gunnar Kvaran. In 2004–2005 she continued studying classical music at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory of St. Petersburg and in 2010 she graduated with a double master's degree from the Musik Akademie, Basel, Switzerland where her main teachers were the cellist and composer Thomas Demenga and violist, composer and improviser Walter Fähndrich. Gyða has created music for films, installations and dance. Her long list of collaborators includes Josephine Foster, Dustin O'Halloran, Jónsi (from Sigur Rós), Damien Rice, Kronos Quartet, Kjartan Sveinsson, Skúli Sverrisson, Ólöf Arnalds, Colin Stetson, Úlfur Hansson, Ben Frost, Shahzad Ismaily, Julian Sartorius [de], Winged Victory for the Sullen, Aaron Dessner & Bryce Dessner (from The National), visual-artist Ragnar Kjartansson and film director Guy Maddin to name but few. Gyða's first solo album, Epicycle, was released worldwide in 2017, winning Album of the Year at the Iceland Music Awards and Kraumur Music Award. The album is a collection of pie
