The Music Portal
A monthly gathering at the edge of music, intuition, and the unknown.
Once a month, we gather. You bring what is alive in you.
A question, a feeling, a threshold, a fragment of something not yet formed.
I bring my cello and we listen for what wants to emerge.
There is no score, the music does not exist yet.
ENTER THE MUSIC PORTAL
$25/month Cancel anytime
Each gathering follows an arc; part ritual, part concert, part collective experiment in deep listening. We move through:
What happens inside the Portal?
1. Reflection
Before we gather, I send you questions. Something to sit with, something to notice. You can bring your response into the Portal, or keep it entirely to yourself.
2. Ceremony
We arrive.
We mark the threshold between ordinary time and the space we're about to enter.
3. Excavation
We listen beneath the obvious, to what is moving, to what hasn't found language yet, too what might be asking for our attention.
4. Transmission
Then, the music: I channel through the cello. Nothing is composed in advance. The people who gather shape what emerges. You are not only witnessing the music, you are inside its creation.
5. Closing
There is space to share what you heard, saw, remembered, imagined, or felt. Or to say nothing.
6. Deepening
Afterward, you receive the recording, a document of something that existed once, between these particular people, on this particular night. Return to it later and it may tell you something different.
Every Portal leaves something behind.
Members have access to an evolving archive of improvised musical journeys created over the past 18+ months.
Some are spacious.
Some are strange.
Some are tender, dissonant, restless, luminous.
There are also four Transformational Sonic Suites, longer-form musical works created around particular inner landscapes.
You can enter the archive according to mood, instinct, curiosity, or chance.
But the center of the Music Portal remains the live gathering.
Because the archive contains what happened.
The Portal is where we find out what happens next.
The Archive
A DIFFERENT KIND OF CONCERT
The Music Portal lives somewhere between performance and participation.
I am the musician, but I am not performing at you.
You are not an audience in the traditional sense.
What you bring into the room becomes part of the conditions from which the music emerges.
A thought.
An image.
A question you've been carrying.
A transition you're standing inside.
Something you cannot name.
Or simply your presence.
I listen.
And then I play.
No two Portals can be repeated because no two rooms are ever the same.
PERHAPS THIS IS YOUR KIND OF PLACE
If you are drawn to unfinished things.
To the moment before something becomes known.
To music that doesn't tell you what to feel.
To art as a way of encountering yourself and the world differently.
To rooms where interesting people gather without needing to know exactly what will happen.
To questions that are more interesting than their answers.
To experiences that resist being optimized.
To beauty with a little strangeness in it.
If you are an artist, writer, or someone who makes things from the inside out,
You may feel at home here.
what people are saying:
"When words cannot describe what one feels, let the music take you where your heart needs to be. Having suppressed my sadness... my heart and tears did overflow."
— Maryam (Soul Resonance receiver)"I can honestly say I have never experienced anything like what happens in my body when you play.”
— Beth (Music Portal Member)"That was so otherworldly that I felt like I was completely moved to another dimension. The frequency of it all was really able to cut through all of the noise in my brain and pull me to a place of stillness..."
— K. (Music Portal Member)
The next music portal: September 27
We will gather online.
Bring headphones.
Bring something to write with, if you like.
Bring whatever has been following you around lately.
I'll bring the cello.
We'll begin there.
$25/month · Cancel anytime
The Artist:
Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir
Grammy-nominated cellist, improviser, and sonic explorer
My life with the cello began inside the classical tradition.
Scores. Interpretation. Rehearsal. The extraordinary pursuit of bringing music written by dead white men fully to life.
That path has taken me from Carnegie Hall to Suntory Hall, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the Iceland Symphony.
But somewhere along the way, another question began following me:
What happens when there is no score?
Improvisation became a way of finding out.
A practice of listening before knowing.
Of following sound somewhere I could not have planned.
Of allowing the people, atmosphere, questions, tensions, silences, and accidents of a particular moment to enter the music.
The Music Portal grew out of that practice.
I never know exactly what I'm going to play.
That's the point.
YOUR MUSIC PORTAL MEMBERSHIP
$25/month
Membership opens the door to:
The monthly live Music Portal
The complete archive of past Portals
Four Transformational Sonic Suites
New recordings as they are created
The opportunity to bring your own questions, themes, and fragments into future Portals
Member invitations to other musical experiences, performances, and deeper work
Stay for as long as the Portal interests you, leave when it doesn't.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No.
The Portal tends to attract artists, musicians, writers, designers, makers, and other curious humans, but there is no credential required at the door.
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We gather online once a month.
There is reflection, conversation, ritual, and an extended live cello improvisation created in response to what has entered the room.
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No.
You can offer something into the room or remain completely private.
Listening is participation.
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Every Portal is recorded and added to the archive.
But if you can come live, come live.
Being there while the music is still unknown is different.
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Sort of.
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Sometimes.
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No.
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Absolutely not.
COME INTO THE MUSIC
There is no curriculum.
No lesson to complete.
No promised transformation.
Just a room.
A cello.
A group of people.
And something we haven't heard yet.
ENTER THE MUSIC PORTAL
$25/month