ARTISTS
OUTPOST II has expanded and there are two new artists joining the project, Astri Hoffman-Tollaas and Eygló Höskuldsdóttir Viborg.
BIRGIT
Birgit Djupedal (1994-) is a Norwegian composer/performer. She grew up in Bodø. Her musical education started at the local music school where she learnt piano, and then continued at Bodø Videregående. There she took organ and singing lessons. She moved to Trondheim to study musicology and church music, and then to Reykjavík to study master in composition.
Djupedal’s music has been performed at Festspillene i Bergen, Norsk salmefestival, Nordland musikkfestuke, Trondheim kammermusikkfestival, Ultima, Sumartónleikar í Skálholti (IS) og Vaka Þjóðlistahátið (IS), Óperudagar í Reykjavík (IS), shown on RÚV, Icelandic television and been a part of The European Year of Cultural Heritage.
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As well as being a composer, she is educated as an producer and has led many musical projects from idea to concert. She is, together with Ásbjörg, the artistic director and producer of Icelands oldest musical festival Skálholt Summer Concerts.
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Birgit enjoys being a part of the whole process of her music, from idea, then creating and often also performing. She started this project to create a space, an outpost, where composer/performers could do just this as well as share the whole process with each other.
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ASTRI
Astri Hoffman-Tollaas (1991-) is a Norwegian and German cellist. She finished her master degree in cello performance from the Institute of Music at NTNU in 2019. Since then she has been working as a freelance cellist, playing classical, pop, jazz and improvised music in various ensembles.
Her main employer is the chamber orchestra TrondheimSoloists, a group of string players, collaborating with international musicians from all over the world. With them she has been travelling to Hong Kong, Vienna, Berlin and the Canary Islands, among others, playing with soloists like Pekka Kuuisto, Alisa Weilerstein, Truls Mørk and Håvard Gimse. With her jazz ensemble SFE Hoffman-Tollaas has been collaborating with the Norwegian author Lars Saabye Christensen who wrote poems for our album Minimal, released in 2018.
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She is also a passionate teacher, teaching students privately and at the communal music schools in Trondheim (Trondheim Kommunale Kulturskole).
ÁSBJÖRG
Ásbjörg Jónsdóttir (1988- ) is an Icelandic composer, pianist and jazz vocalist. She received her BA in composition from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2014 and her MA in composition from the same institution in 2018. Jónsdóttir is engaged with various musical activities. In addition to her composition career, she conducts a children's choir and teaches music theory. Her music has been performed by established groups and performers, such as; Duo Harpverk, Elektra Ensemble, Dómkórinn í Reykjavík (Reykjavík Cathedral Choir), Caput, Hljómeyki and Heiða Árnadóttir.
Jónsdóttir has also worked on other musical projects such as recordings, arrangements and musical research.She is currently working on a research project about jazz in Iceland in collaboration with Þorbjörg Daphne Hall. Jónsdóttir published a book with 12 new songs for children's choir in April 2019.
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​Ásbjörg is the artistic director and producer, together with Birgit, at the oldest musical festival in Iceland, Skálholt Summer Concerts.
EYGLÓ
Eygló Höskuldsdóttir Viborg (1989 - ) studied composition at Berklee College of Music and received her BMus degree from there in 2017. A year later she received a Fulbright Scholarship to start her MMus program in Concert Music Composition at New York University where she studied with the Pulitzer Prize recipient Julia Wolfe. In 2021 she was one of two composers in residence at the oldest musical festival in Iceland, Skálholt Summer concerts.
Eygló's music has been performed in Iceland, New York, Boston and Tokyo by renowned groups such as Iceland Symphony Orchestra and JACK Quartet.
In addition to composing, performing is also a passion of Eygló's. In 2010 she sang on Björk's album Biophilia with her all female choir Graduale Nobili, and joined Björk's world tour following the album's release. Eygló currently sings with two mixed choirs, Hljómeyki and Kór Langholtskirkju, as well as being a regular guest singer and keyboardist with the cover band Bjartar Sveiflur.
ANNE
Anne Handeland (2000-) is a cellist based in Trondheim, where she studies with Marianne Baudouin Lie at NTNU Institute of music. She is originally from Nøtterøy, where she from a young age played in string and symphony orchestras and sang in the church choir.
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The last couple of years she has gotten the opportunity to work in a wide variety of genres including pop, standard jazz and free improvisation as well as the classical repertoire. She also sings in a student choir and is the founder and leader of the student chamber orchestra Ensemble TRD.
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Anne will travel with OUTPOST to Iceland. We are really happy to have her be the substitute for Astri.
