While maintaining a busy concert schedule, Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute is also Associate Professor of Piano at Duke University where she teaches and conducts research. 

Northscapes is Jokubaviciute’s third release, and it brings together recent works by European composers of the Nordic and Baltic regions whose compositions share a preoccupation with nature, landscape and the sonic environs of Northern Europe. This is exemplified by Norwegian composer Lasse Thoresen (b. 1949) whose Invocation of Pristine Light opens the program with glistening timbral cascades. 

Iceland’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977) and Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) use different methods – expansive extended techniques and examination of tonal boundaries respectively – to explore the piano’s organic textural possibilities. The landscape of the unconscious permeates three dreamy Nocturnes by Denmark’s Bent Sørensen (b. 1958); the captivating Fantasia by Lithuanian composer Raminta Šerkšnytė (b. 1975) inhabits similar dreamscapes, at times calling to mind the cosmic spiritual universes of Alice Coltrane (1937–2007). Music for a Summer Evening by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946) returns to...