“One of the more emotionally subtle new works was Áslaug Rún Magnúsdóttir’s a lot of ANGELS to consider, premièred on Friday night by EKKI MINNA Duo, comprising cellist Andrew Power and accordionist Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. Adorned with cherubic wings, for all the music’s material activity it felt as if there were a stasis at its core. Accompanied by a delicately enraptured electronic soundscape, over time the players got up from their seats and began to circle round the space, initially just turning, later gyrating and dancing. Musically gorgeous and visually poignant, in ways that I couldn’t (and still can’t) quite comprehend it was surprisingly moving.”

— Simon Cummings

“I also enjoy the delicate, self-consciously quirky Copenhagen-based Ekki Minna duo, British cellist Andrew Power and Icelandic accordionist Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. Their show includes blowing on large homemade cardboard comb things; tapping and blowing at their instruments; before climaxing with both musicians setting up a continuing unfolding loop, putting on angel wings and dancing in slow-motion around the hall. This is Áslaug Rún Magnúsdóttir’s piece A Lot Of Angels To Consider, and it’s funny, camp, yet at the same time very affecting. Opened up by the context, it feels to me as if they melt us all, via choreography, into another plain altogether.”

— Chris T-T

“As is so often the case, though, the most telling performances were to be found in smaller-scale, chamber events. The most still and focused of them was Mads Emil Dreyer’s Vidder 1, receiving its first performance in Iceland by EKKI MINNA Duo. The sustained tones from accordion and cello sounded like achingly slow breathing, but with each inhalation merging into the following exhalation, and vice versa, resulting in something like an instrumental circular breathing. Slowly shifting and overlapping, always falling somewhere mysteriously between consonance and dissonance (at no point did it really feel like either), it was ravishingly beautiful.”

— Simon Cummings