Anna Thorvaldsdottir, an Icelandic composer known for richly textured works that are often inspired by nature, was named Friday as the New York Philharmonic’s second Kravis Emerging Composer — an honor that comes with $50,000 and a commission to write for the orchestra.
Alan Gilbert, the orchestra’s music director, praised what he described as her unique, expressive voice. “Her uncompromising approach to building soundscapes creates a visceral, pictorial aesthetic that is deeply connected to her Icelandic heritage,” he said in a statement.
Ms. Thorvaldsdottir, who studied in her native Iceland and at the University of California, San Diego, has enjoyed a growing profile in recent years. Her works have been performed in New York at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival and as part of the Composer Portraits series at Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and her recordings, “Rhízōma,” which was released in 2011, and “Aerial,” from last year, have won critical praise.
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote in The New York Times last year that Ms. Thorvaldsdottir’s music “has a natural beauty to it in the way it reveals itself patiently, and in its unpredictable but organic-seeming instances of rhythmic quickening.”
In a statement, Ms. Thorvaldsdottir said that she was “deeply looking forward” to working on the commission for the Philharmonic
She succeeds Sean Shepherd, who was named the inaugural Kravis Emerging Composer in 2012.